RoSPA and Right Directions join forces to collate data on leisure accidents

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has partnered with health and safety and quality management specialist Right Directions to produce improved accident and incident information for the benefit of the UK’s leisure industry.

The partnership will see the two organisations working together to collate a wide range of data on accidents arising from sport and physical activity across the country, in a bid to improve safety. It will also be used to identify any patterns which arise as a result of gathering the date, location and details of these accidents, to help promote best practice, support new legislation and improve how the leisure sector operates.

The agreement will also bring benefits within the sector for benchmarking and research purposes, as well as collaboration on policy, industry initiatives, training programmes and campaigns.

David Rushton, head of education and leisure at RoSPA, said: “RoSPA believes that accessible sport and physical activity is important for quality of life for people of all ages and should be as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible. Quality and well managed safety arrangements, which do not detract from the participant’s experience of an activity, go hand in hand.

“RoSPA’s knowledge of safety, coupled with Right Directions’ extensive experience on quality, makes this new partnership an excellent fit that will be of great benefit to sport and leisure clients and will inform national leisure safety policy. We aim to produce the most comprehensive leisure safety and quality knowledge base in the country.”

Caroline Constantine, managing director of Right Directions, said: “RoSPA has excellent knowledge and data around the safety of swimming pools. Through Right Directions’ clients and the Quest assessments that we carry out on behalf of Sport England, we have access to around 800 public and private leisure facilities.

“By working together we can collate meaningful data on when, where and how accidents are most likely to take place. Any patterns can then be used to promote best practice, support new legislation and ultimately improve how we work as a sector.”

RoSPA is a registered charity with a mission to “save lives and reduce injuries” and has been at the forefront of health and safety for nearly a century. To find out more about RoSPA’s leisure safety work, visit www.rospa.com/leisuresafety.

RoSPA’s mission is to save lives and reduce injuries

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