A leisure centre in St Albans has been awarded the highest accolade of an ‘excellent’ standard by a UK quality scheme for sport and leisure.

Westminster Lodge Leisure Centre, operated by Everyone Active in partnership with St Albans City and District Council, was awarded the accolade by Quest.

It is a facility improvement programme – and carries out rigours assessments on leisure centres across the UK.

Westminster Lodge had been assessed for two days on its health and safety, environment, customer experience, staff, cleaning and housekeeping. The Quest team also sent a ‘mystery shopper’ to review the facilities unannounced.

But the Lodge passed all assessments – receiving a score above 84% to receive an ‘excellent’ accolade.

The Quest assessor had been particularly complimentary about the cleaning, maintenance, customer experience, colleagues and management team at Westminster Lodge.

Cllr Anthony Rowlands, portfolio holder for community, leisure and sport at St Albans City and District Council, said: “I would like to congratulate Westminster Lodge for achieving Quest Excellent.

“We work very closely with the team there to ensure high standards, continuous development, progress and improvements.

“We are particularly proud of the facility and it’s gratifying to see critical and independent validation of its extraordinary service and standards.”

Lesley Garner, Everyone Active general manager, added: “We are absolutely thrilled to be awarded ‘Excellent’ by Quest and I would like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and professionalism which enabled us to rate so highly.

“We are very proud of our achievement which is genuinely a team effort with the work of every colleague contributing to the result.”