Memorandum submitted by Sport England
SPORT ENGLAND'S
ROLE—EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY
Sport England's vision is to create an active
and successful sporting nation. Our objective is to increase the
number of people actively engaged in sport and physical activity
by 1% a year up to 2020. Whilst this target spans both community
and elite sport, it is clear that the delivery of sport in the
community is a major priority in achieving this ambitious target.
Published in December 2002 by the No 10 Policy
Unit, Game Plan called for greater priority to be given to encouraging
wider grassroots participation in sport, particularly amongst
economically disadvantaged people, black and ethnic minorities,
young people, women and older people.
Prior to the reform of Sport England, the sport
delivery process was one of reactively awarding grants. During
the reform period the Sport England Board identified a number
of issues that had impacted negatively on the delivery of community
sport in this country:
— Multiple funding streams.
— Complex and numerous sporting initiatives.
— Lack of effective measurement.
— Planning restrictions a serious barrier
to increasing participation.
— Lack of private sector involvement.
— Inefficient investments in community
facilities.
— Ineffective coaching, clubs and volunteering
structure.
— The significant drop off rate in
post school participation (as seen below):
In January 2003 a number of specific key steps
were taken towards improving the delivery of sport in the community.
With the aim of implementing a proactive sports development investment
programme, Sport England undertook a rigorous modernisation process,
we:
— Streamlined the organisation, reduced
headcount from 570 to 275 and released funds from the back office
to front line delivery
— Reduced funding streams from 75 to
two—"national" and "regional" streams—aimed
at enabling our partners to set their own priorities within our
strategic plan and to then be in a clear position to hold them
accountable
— Identified local delivery as a key
priority and therefore established nine Regional Sports Boards
(RSBs), which report directly to Sport England's main board. At
regional level, RSBs are the face of "modernised sport",
offering a new investment and delivery platform for sport in the
community and a strategic role to lever in additional funds for
sport (approaching £2 of new money for every £1 invested).
In March 2004 a new Framework for Sport in
England was published. This was underpinned by nine regional
plans for sport with the clear objective of increasing the number
of people actively engaged in sport by 1% a year up to 2020.
Through the Framework for Sport, the
nine regional plans and from evidence-based research (including
international comparisons) a number of interventions have been
identified and delivery has already started:
— Development of a single system for
sport in the community—working primarily through our key
delivery agents, National Governing Bodies of sport, local authorities,
the County Sport Partnership network, and ensuring accountability
from Government to those delivering locally
— Launch of a national social marketing
campaign to encourage a behavioral shift in attitudes towards
physical activity in England. A successful pilot has already been
carried out in the North East with positive outcomes for participation
— Establishment of a robust performance
management system and a stronger evidence base to inform investment
decisions and strategy development
— Engagement of the private sector
in terms of grass roots investment and accessibility to local
sporting facilities.
RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS
Across the board national participation rates
have remained steady, in the face of challenging trends in society
such as increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Despite this we have
seen a significant rise in the utilisation figures for new facilities.
Over the last 10 years a period of substantial investment has
seen £2 billion of Lottery funding invested into more than
4,000 projects to improve sporting environments and boost coaching
and club structures. A 154% increase in facility use throughout
has been evidenced, from 12 million to 30 million visits as a
result of our investments into facilities.
The table below shows the effectiveness of our
investment strategy in meeting our key objectives. However we
now need to solve the issues of replicating these micro successes
on a macro level:
Monitored Community Usage Facility
| Usage before | Usage after
| % increase |
| All | 14,710,345 | 37,494,897
| 154.9 |
| Female | 1,981,792 | 7,594,799
| 283.2 |
| Female U18 | 490,290 | 2,355,706
| 380.5 |
| Male | 9,183,681 | 21,907,013
| 138.5 |
| Male U18 | 743,180 | 3,467,366
| 366.6 |
| Elite | 10,377 | 84,414
| 713.5 |
| Disabled | 46,315 | 357,805
| 672.5 |
| Ethnic minority | 317,900 |
1,013,476 | 218.8 |
| Coaching numbers | 5,528 |
12,385 | 124.0 |
| Coaching hours | 10,353 |
19,381 | 87.2 |
| Coaching hours U18 | 10,470
| 21,248 | 102.9 |
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Sport England is at the heart of driving sport into our communities.
Much has already been achieved and we have responded to the Government's
challenge as laid out in Game Plan. Providing co-ordination around
activities at a regional level has proved to be the most effective
means of engaging key stakeholders and generating investment in
the drive to increase participation in community sport.
One such investment programme is the Community Club Development
Programme—an innovative collaboration between the DCMS,
Sport England, and 20 national governing bodies of sport (NGBs).
For the first time, this programme enables the NGBs to strategically
identify capital projects for investment and, working in partnership
with Sport England, ensure that projects are delivered effectively.
The Community Club Development Programme is intended to address
the needs of the backbone of English sport—the community
based sports clubs themselves. In a recent survey of sports clubs,
the lack of adequate sports facilities was cited as the major
issue inhibiting the development of clubs. Funding for this programme
amounts to £100 million up to 2008 with over £30 million
already invested through 500 awards ranging from £5,000 to
£1 million.
In November 2004, Sport England and the Big Lottery Fund
announced the Active England Programme. This £108 million
programme is developing some of the most creative sport and leisure
facilities, bringing in investment from a wide range of partners
into some of the most deprived areas. Developments across the
country will be testing out new ways of delivering community sport
facilities with new partners, targeting those who do not currently
participate in sport and physical activity.
Government have recently committed £27.5 million of
funding towards a National Sports Foundation in order to engage
the private sector more fully in local community sport delivery.
Multi-sport environments play a key part in increasing participation
levels in sport and physical activity. This new approach centres
on the development of community hubs that combine multiple sports
and activities, and also have the potential to bring health, social
welfare and education services together under one roof. The key
to success for multi-sport environments rests firmly in people—specifically
through investing in volunteers and coaches.
Case study: Bolton Lads and Girls Club—Getting the Community
Active
The club is in the top 10% of deprived wards in the country
and has a proud history spanning 100 years but the old facilities
were simply falling apart and required significant investment.
With the local area dependant on the club to keep the community
active and off the streets, a significant cash boost was needed.
Sport England invested £4m towards the project costs
of refurbishing and developing the multi-sport club. Improved
facilities include sports halls, boxing gym, a dance and aerobics
centre, fitness and weights room. Within the redeveloped club,
a number of new programmes were set up for the community of Bolton.
These included an after-school club, a junior club, senior club
and a number of community groups. The results speak for themselves
with over 2,500 youngsters using the facility each week.
Case study: Westway Sports Centre—Delivery Sport into
the Community
Sport England has invested £8.3 million of Lottery funding
to help redevelop the facilities at the Westway Sports Centre.
The Centre reopened in 2001, with new artificial pitches, the
UK's largest climbing wall, indoor and outdoor tennis courts,
five courts, a gym and netball and basketball courts.
Last year 400,000 people visited the centre—previously
a derelict strip of land under the A40 flyover in West London.
Over 600 children receive tennis coaching, four players are ranked
in the top ten juniors in the country, and 140 teams play on the
artificial pitches each week.
Sport England has made significant progress in building the
case for sport with key Government departments and national and
regional partners. The objective is simple: we need to put sport
and physical activity at the heart of all our communities.
HEALTH
Sport and physical activity are known to reduce direct healthcare
costs and the risk of contracting chronic diseases—and there
is a need to communicate this. Delivering Choosing Health identifies
the marketing of physical activity as a "big win" in
public health, particularly in relation to tackling obesity. The
plans are a real opportunity to boost participation in sport and
leisure activities and create a healthier nation. They set out
for the first time a nationally co-ordinated cross-government
action plan identifying the leadership role of the NHS and the
need to work across all sectors. Sport England has rightly been
identified as a key delivery partner to the Department of Health
in achieving these objectives and stands ready to deliver.
VOLUNTEERING
Volunteering is the lifeblood of sport in England. It represents
26% of all formal volunteering and plays a key role in encouraging
community sport. In response to the Russell Commission, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer recently announced a significant investment into
youth volunteering. In research conducted, a total of 47% of young
people stated `sport' as their main volunteering interest. Sport
England is highlighted as a key partner to drive this work forward
and is well placed to engage more young people in volunteering
action within their communities. The Year of the Volunteer 2005
sport effort is also being led by Sport England and key partners.
In partnership with Sports Leaders UK and the Youth Sport
Trust, Sport England is working to deliver Step Into Sport, which
aims to encourage more young people to become involved in sport
in their local communities. It provides a structured path to attract
people into sports volunteering and deploy their experience and
talents to enrich local community and school sport. Since it began
in 2002-03, the programme has enabled 60,000 young people to undertake
sports leadership training, and engaged 4,000 young people in
community volunteering.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
Sport England has been working closely with the Audit Commission
on the next round of Comprehensive Performance Assessment for
Local Authorities and the potential inclusion of sport in the
"culture block". Sport and active recreation can make
a positive and valuable contribution both to national policy objectives
and shared local authority priorities. Sport England is committed
to ensuring that there is robust and consistent data across all
local authorities and has identified indicators that measure levels
of participation. Robust, practical methodologies will deliver
these data requirements. If the culture block is included as part
of CPA it could be one of the most important steps forward for
community sport. It will mean that local government performance
will be measured against a range of indicators, including increasing
participation in community sport, in the same way as their performance
on housing and social service provision.
Sport England has also recently published guidelines, endorsed
by ODPM and DCMS, to help local authorities develop Local Public
Service Agreements (LPSAs) for sport and active recreation. Sport
England is leading on establishing the place of sport in Local
Area Agreements (LAAs), with guidance notes to be published in
June 2005. Furthermore, a dialogue is beginning with ODPM to encourage
the adoption of Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs) for
community sport and recreation. In short, Sport England is committed
to continuous improvement in the sector and to the development
of performance tools which help local authorities focus attention
on community sport and direct resource accordingly.
The last 10 years has seen sport benefit significantly from
public investment. People who are already actively engaged are
playing more sport in better, higher quality facilities, with
better club and coaching structures. Whilst the 30% who play sport
have benefited in the last ten years, we need to reach a much
larger section of the population if we are to realise the wider
impacts that sport can have on health, education, community cohesion
and the economy.
The agenda for the future is about fully targeting those
not engaged in sports or any kind of physical activity. This can
be achieved through communicating our messages and providing the
infrastructure and networks on the ground where they can and want
to get active.
Sport England will also deliver a strategy based on evidence,
including international comparisons, and focused on achieving
significant progress towards three key Government objectives:
— Reinvigorating community sport to help to create
stronger and safer communities, linked to the Government's emphasis
on "civility", and bringing about a significant increase
in volunteering, voluntary sector management of resources and
the development of volunteer support and education systems
— Transforming the culture of physical activity
in England to make a major contribution to the "ticking time
bomb" of obesity.
— Regenerating sporting provision as a major contribution
to the new localism and "liveability" agendas. A new
generation of innovative facilities and management regimes that
share resources, avoid duplication, shed bureaucracy and genuinely
relate to the needs of local communities.
April 2005
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