North Hertfordshire-based Stevenage Leisure (SLL) has been nominated for a National Business Excellence Award.

The nomination, under the sport and leisure business category of the Best Practice Forum, was made based on a case study.

The key factors of the study included; business growth, winning external contracts, improvement and achievement of QUEST (quality management accreditation), cultural change of external contracts, employee training and development, the re-branding of SLL and winning an environmental business award.

All nominees will be featured in The Observer newspaper and the winners will be announced in May.

The Best Practice Forum was launched in September 2001 by former tourism minister Dr Kim Howells to improve the competitiveness of the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism industry.

It is a direct response to the government's Competitiveness White Paper and seeks to improve quality, productivity and business performance, particularly amongst small businesses, which make up 85 per cent of the 300,000 establishments in the industry.