The impact of the QUEST quality award on the public leisure sector

This paper is based on an exploratory case study analysis of the impact of quality management within the UK public leisure sector, with reference to the quality award Quest on a leisure centre. There is a continuing challenge within the UK public sector to meet the requirements of the Government's Best Value initiative. Many local authorities are attempting to address these challenges by applying organisational quality award models such as the Business Excellence Model. In the public leisure sector of the UK the Quest model has been used as part of a scheme since 1998. Through surveys and indepth longitudinal case study, this paper analyses the effectiveness of the Quest award within the Northern Ireland (NI) context. It was found that the introduction of Quest led to improvements in employee and customer satisfaction along with improvement in performance measures.