Merseyside Sports Partnership is committed to the continuous improvement of sport and recreation services and to ensuring it delivers its strategic priorities in partnership.

The Towards an Excellent Service (TAES) model provides a basis for self-assessment that has enabled Merseyside Sports Partnership to identify areas in which we are performing well together with priority areas for improvement.

The excellence framework has been developed using existing quality management models, inspection frameworks and accreditation systems such as EFQM, Investors in People (IIP) and Quest. It is based around eight factors believed to most strongly influence the quality of sport and recreation services. These themes are:

1) Leadership
2) Policy & Strategy
3) Community Engagement
4) Partnership Working
5) Use of Resources
6) People Management
7) Service Standards
8) Performance Measurement & Learning

Each theme is broken down into set criteria defining core aspects of a quality service. Merseyside Sports Partnership signed up to use the TAES framework in September 2005 as part of its commitment to continuous improvement. The key benefits of this approach include:

• highlighting strengths and weaknesses in service delivery
• providing a valuable insight into how partners perceive our services and policies
• providing a basis for discussions with managers, partners and other stakeholders about the shape of the service going forward
• setting a benchmark to be used for future monitoring and subsequent discussions about how or where the service has improved

Our Self Assessment

Merseyside Sports Partnership carried out its self-assessment by holding a series of workshops and meetings with core staff and representatives from partner organisations, between November 2005 and March 2006. This involved an assessment questionnaire, one to one interviews and group sessions. Evidence was gathered to support the Partnership’s self-assessment prior to validation. This process of evidence gathering provided an insight into the areas in which the Partnership's performance was rated as Poor, Fair, Good and Excellent.

The Merseyside Sports Partnership TAES assessment was externally verified in March 2006, and the partnership achieved an overall ‘Fair’ rating.

Most importantly, key areas for improvement were identified by the partnership and an improvement plan was produced. A small working group and the core staff team have been working to this improvement plan over the past 12 months.
Merseyside Sports Partnership intends to undertake a further self assessment process for the partnership on an annual basis to enable us to track progress and identify improvement priorities for the next 12 months.

Please click on the links below to various documents relating to the validation process and our Annual Improvement Plans.

CSP Scoping Exercise
TAES Combined Self Assessment
MSP TAES Improvement Plan 2006/07
MSP TAES Improvement Plan 2007/08