Maidenhead & Windsor

Two Windsor and Maidenhead Royal Borough leisure centres are this week celebrating a sporting double which puts them firmly in the top ten leisure centres in the country.

The Magnet in Maidenhead and Windsor leisure centre have each performed their own personal bests to secure their places in the premier league of leisure centres across the country in terms of how they operate and care for their customers in a prestigious quality assessment scheme.

The Magnet in Maidenhead is now joint third in the country out of a total of 777 leisure centres, with a score of 85%, a leap of two places from fifth in the country at its last accreditation two years ago.

The busy centre now lines up proudly alongside Lilleshall National sports centre in Shropshire, surpassed only by Edinburgh leisure centre in top spot and Guildford Spectrum in second place.

Windsor leisure centre has made an even greater leap for sporting-kind with its rise from joint 15th two years ago to seventh place and 81% in this year's ratings.

QUEST is a nationally recognised, industry-wide quality assurance for leisure centres, supported by all four home sports councils including Sport England and by the Audit Commission as a tool for demonstrating quality assurance.

The Magnet is one of the first leisure centres in the country to be assessed under the scheme's new rating system, which features a rigorous two-day inspection, and mystery visits as well as a focus on four specific areas – facility operations, customer relations, staffing and service development and review.

Windsor leisure centre was assessed on the existing QUEST scheme which also included a two-day visit by a national QUEST assessor for a detailed inspection of systems and processes and interviews with staff earlier this year

Cllr Jesse Grey, lead member for leisure and culture, said this week: "These are fantastic results for both the Magnet and Windsor Leisure Centre, which reflect a great deal of hard work and dedication from all the staff involved.

"The QUEST assessment is a very rigorous and demanding one, but it does give a very valuable independent reflection of the work and service and ongoing commitment to improvement of which we are so very proud.

"I would like to congratulate everyone involved on such well-deserved recognition of a job truly well done."

This is the Magnet's third QUEST accreditation and the fourth for WLC.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead