Developing an Excellence Framework for Sport and Recreation

Sport England in the East Midlands is co-ordinating a project working with representatives from DCMS, the Audit Commission, the Institute of Local Government Studies, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management, Institute for Sport and Recreation Management, National Association for Sports Development and the Central Council of Physical Recreation and various officers from local government and county sports partnerships to develop an excellence framework for sport and recreation services.

Initial focus has been on Local Government, but the work is designed to be applied across the whole sport sector.

The group was set up to try and address serious concerns about the capacity of local government to sustain quality sports development work into the future. The priority sport and recreation is being given within local government as a result of changes to the way they are performance measured and funded was seen as a major issue. CIPFA figures show local authorities spend over £1 billion a year on sport and recreation services but this investment is increasingly under threat as local authorities prepare improvement plans and finalise budgets.

The need to take action was clear. Reasons identified included;
  1. Whilst there is a national strategy for the development of sport (Game Plan) there are no clear national priorities for the service being driven by Government through its performance improvement programmes.

  2. Sport and Recreation does not have its own inspection service such as Ofsted to provide a focus and drive up improvement

  3. Nor does it have a national framework to define excellence in terms of the provision of Sport and Recreation service against which we can judge or be judged by others.
There is emerging evidence that, as a consequence, Sport and Recreation services are disadvantaged when it comes to the allocation of resources in the increasingly competitive world of local government.

The framework has three objectives:
  • To provide a basis for self-assessment that will enable Sport and Recreation services to achieve continuous improvement,

  • To provide a basis for future inspection regimes

  • To provide a vehicle through which a national strategy for sports development or national priorities for Sport and Recreation could be delivered.
The project group has met on several occasions and has created a framework under 8 headings;
  1. Leadership
  2. Policy and strategy
  3. Community engagement
  4. Partnership working
  5. Use of resources
  6. People management
  7. Standards of service
  8. Performance management
Service standards are then defined at 4 levels - Poor, Fair, Good and Excellent

Against these standards an evidence base is then developed. This has now been completed for local government and INLOGOV are to pilot the frameworks with 3 local authorities - a Metropolitan, County and District Council.

The model is designed to be applied beyond local government and 'Pathfinders' are being introduced with a County Sports Partnership and 2 National Governing Bodies of Sport to test this element of the work.

Underpinning this whole process is a desire to build into the framework, evidence base and assessment process measures of the effectiveness of service provision against a national strategy or framework for sports development. The group has worked with a range of key players to develop a Sports Development Partnership Model, which will be fundamental to future assessment processes. Once the pilots for local government are complete the model will be ready for use.

DCMS are exploring how they might apply a similar process to all of the cultural sector service areas. The Sports Minister will use the model and framework to argue for greater recognition within the CPA process and the Audit Commission will be asked to build an inspection regime for local government that is based upon this work.

At this point, for the first time, the sector will have a credible set of service standards, an inspection regime that measures performance against those standards and a national framework for sport development. Perhaps most importantly we will have the power of intervention where service standards are not achieving an acceptable level of performance. For further details, click onto the following:-
  1. The rationale for this work  (MS Word 33.5KB)
    - Sports Development Partnership Model (ppt 41KB)

  2. TAES Sports Development Partnership Model 41KB

  3. A Performance Management Framework for Sport and Recreation Services [updated 20 May 2004] MS Word 461KB

  4. Evidence schedule - this is the local authority evidence base which identifies the sort of evidence required to demonstrate that a particular criteria has been met or not.  (MS Word 35KB)

  5. Piloting and evaluation - INLOGOV - Process for piloting work with 2 tiers of Local Authorities over the next few months.   Free Adobe Acrobat reader software(pdf 38.3KB)

  6. INLOGOV - Evaluation of the Proposed Framework for Excellence in Sport and Recreation Management
    Free Adobe Acrobat reader software pdf 204KB

  7. Latest progress
    ILAM/CLOA presentation by Peter Murphy - (MS Word 39.5KB)
    Diagrams - (ppt 141KB)

  8. Click here to view the agendas and minutes of the Group.
For further information please contact Colin Dyson on
0115 9823604

Free Adobe Acrobat reader software Files with this symbol are in PDF format, which can be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat reader software. This software is provided free by Adobe Systems Inc. and can be downloaded from Adobe by clicking here.