The certification has been developed over four years in partnership with Sport England, The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA), Right Directions (which delivers Quest – the quality scheme by which our sector is measured), and EuropeActive and The Royal Netherlands Standardisation Institute (NEN), which together deliver the European FITcert scheme.
TAS is a baseline certification available to all ukactive members that operate sport, fitness and leisure facilities in the UK.
Co-developed with the industry, it has been designed to provide value for facility operators across the public, private and independent sectors, no matter how small or large.
How can TAS help get more people active?
The certification has been designed to unite operators in their pursuit of operational excellence and to help them demonstrate quality and compliance with the UK law.
As a baseline certification, TAS can be achieved by demonstrating that an operator is meeting the requirements for areas such as health and safety laws and regulation, professional standards, safeguarding measures and data protection.
The recognition is achieved through a 40-question process conducted by an independent assessment body.
By making it accessible and achievable to operators of any size, this recognisable quality mark will help to instill trust and confidence for more consumers, as well as supporting wider partners such as healthcare professionals and the NHS to feel confident referring patients to our sector’s facilities.
This will be crucial to aid us in our shared mission to reduce health inequalities across England.
Importantly, this baseline certification also encourages operators to continue their improvement journey by introducing new pathways to Quest certification and the FITcert scheme.
How are standards evolving?
In 2020, the physical activity sector – like many other customer-facing sectors – was experiencing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with facilities around the world being forced to close throughout long periods of lockdown.
The importance of demonstrating the sector’s safety procedures was paramount during this time.
In fact, it was this ability to prove the high standards of the sector that led many gyms and leisure centres to opening earlier than other sectors and services following the second national lockdown.
As time progressed, the sector’s commitment to standards continued and the industry was well aware of the role health and safety commitments could ultimately have on reputation and on being able to welcome even more people through the door.
Since then, TAS has been meticulously tested and piloted with a broad range of operators, to ensure it is a certification all ukactive member operators can achieve, with a clear pathway for those that decide to further progress their journey to excellence through the likes of Quest and FitCert, without duplication.
Research by Sport England shows that the sport and physical activity sector in the UK already generates £107.2 billion in social value each year.
We also know from their most recent Children’s Active Lives survey, that participation in gyms and leisure facilities has more than doubled in the past five years, with 908,000 more young people taking part compared to 2017-18.
By recognising this growing demand and the expectations of the next generation, we have the opportunity to use a unified standard to showcase just how safe, supportive and inclusive our sector’s facilities really are.
Doing so will enhance the sector’s reputation, help even more people to feel confident in getting active and ultimately boost the long-term health, happiness and prosperity of the nation.
