A further meeting of the Working Group developing standards for fitness centres took place in Brussels last week. The part 1 of the standards – now known as EN17229:2019 - were published last year and the new work is focussing on standards for the supervision of fitness centres.
This falls into two main areas. The first covers the supervision by operational staff which can be either in person or remotely through surveillance, or a mix of both. The second part covers the qualification requirements for fitness professionals.
Cliff Collins, EuropeActive’s Programme Director and convenor of the Working Group commented “the part 2 standards are particularly relevant for clubs which operate without staff being present, and who use cameras for surveillance. The Working Group have engaged with a number of industry experts to help in the drafting of these standards which will, for the first time, give precise guidelines on what is good practice. The second area of qualifications is currently based on the work that EuropeActive did with a large number of experts and stakeholders to develop what we call “occupational descriptors” and which include precise definitions of the essential skills that fitness professionals require”. The Working Group will have a further meeting in June to finalise the draft.