Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-76)
THE FOOTBALL
FOUNDATION
27 JUNE 2006
Q60 Alan Keen: If my club was in
an extremely deprived area and it was one of the best cases to
give money to in that particular area and no funding had been
given within 10 miles of that place and you said to me, "What
about women?", how would you tackle it?
Ms Fitzgerald: The staff are very
experienced and have the expertise to work you through that process,
and we would also work really closely with the county staff through
the FA in the area to put you in touch with good examples, areas
of best practice. It might be that you would learn from another
club in another area, so we would actually put you in touch with
that club so that you could see how that particular club has flourished
and addressed some of its issues, offer training courses and awareness
programmes to ensure that the club was sort of developed as it
should be, so it is really through the staff's expertise and our
links in the county.
Q61 Alan Keen: In the end if I kept
saying, "What have women got to do with football?",
would you say, "Right, you're not getting the money, full
stop"?
Mr Thorogood: We make sure that
all our grants are aimed at making sure that women's football
is supported as part of that grant. One thing to mention also
is that we do not just accept grants in, but we offer a mentoring
service ahead of that process so that all the things that Clare
was talking about, we would work with a particular organisation
that wanted to secure grant funding from us.
Q62 Alan Keen: It is pretty obvious,
from the range of witnesses that we have asked to come, that the
funding of football is very fragmented. Have you recognised that,
though I know you are pretty new to the position? Would it be
better for what we are looking at today, developing women's football,
if there were not so many funding bodies? I understand that obviously
schools have to be funded separately from the clubs that you are
looking at, but it is very fragmented, is it not?
Mr Thorogood: There is a lot of
work to do in that area, but we have made significant strides
in ensuring that we try and reduce duplication of effort in the
particular regions. We do align ourselves very strongly with the
Sport England regional structure and are working very hard. I
have instigated, since I joined the Football Foundation, a strategy
which is working towards organising and making sure that we have,
what I call, a recognised regional picture of requirement so that
everybody, the regional development agencies, the schools, Sport
England and ourselves, completely understands what the requirement
is for a particular region in terms of investing in football and
in grassroots football. Yes, there is some work to do, but I think
we are working very hard to eradicate a lot of the duplication
of effort.
Q63 Alan Keen: Have you got plans
entirely of sport because in the end we want to see women's football
right throughout the country and connected with every club because,
despite what some women have said that it would be nice to be
separate, it sometimes might not be better because, with community
clubs, we want everyone in there together, veterans, women and
the normal men players.
Mr Thorogood: I think it is important
to state that we work very closely with the Football Association
as the national governing body and it is the Football Association
that drives the development of both the men's and the women's
games. Our role is to make sure that we have the facilities there.
We have seen an exponential increase of interest in women's football
and one of the most important things is to make sure that the
facilities are there for men and women to play the game because,
in managing expectations, if we grow this expectation and women
cannot play football, that would not be a very good thing to do.
One of the very first things the Football Foundation did when
it first started in 2000 was to do a complete survey of all football
facilities in the UK, which is now known as the Register of English
Football Facilities, and one of the alarming facts we found was
that over 94% of the changing facilities were for men only and
they did not provide at all for women. Now, what we are trying
to do now is to drive improvement in that area. Now all our facilities
that we provide grant aid to must have facilities specifically
for women players, coaches and officials.
Ms Fitzgerald: From the community
and education area of work that I come from, it is a key priority
for us to work really closely with our facilities teams, so if
my team know of projects that are looking to develop women and
girls, for example, it is ensuring that they work closely with
our facilities teams so that they are not bottom of the priority
list.
Q64 Mr Hall: If I can follow on from
the answer you have just given, you said that the survey which
was carried out showed that over 90% of football facilities are
men-only facilities and that the Football Foundation grant criteria
state that they must be dual facilities, but how many sports facilities
did you look at, the numerical number, and how many now have got
improved facilities? Have you got those figures to hand?
Mr Thorogood: I do not have those
figures, but I am quite happy to write a note to you immediately
after this. It will be on the REFF, the Register of English Football
Facilities database.
Q65 Mr Hall: So you will be able
to see numerically how many facilities five years ago were for
men only and how many are available now which have dual facilities?
Mr Thorogood: Yes.
Q66 Mr Hall: When I asked this question
to a previous witness, he quite clearly passed the ball in your
direction in terms of what more can the Football Foundation do
to actually improve the physical facilities that are available.
It is the same question: there are four games over a weekend and
the women and girls play last, so they are going to play on pitches
that are torn up, they are in poor condition, and they are never
going to be able to develop the technical skills for the game
if those are the kinds of facilities they are going play on, so
what can we do to help that?
Mr Thorogood: I think the key
thing, the root cause of this or one of the root causes is the
state of the facilities when the women and girls actually get
to play on them and when they actually play. We can help by providing
third
-generation, multi-use facilities, so hard-wearing
Astroturf-type sports facilities. We also make sure that every
grant application is assessed along the lines of making sure that
provision is actively made to ensure that women are not disadvantaged
by the facility or the organisation we are funding.
Ms Fitzgerald: That is exactly
what we would look out for on their development plan and their
usage plan if they were coming in to the facilities team with
a request for funding. It would be really digging into that plan
and seeing when activity would be taking place on that facility,
if it is for women and girls, and that it was not the last lot.
We would have to make sure that it was adequate for the needs
of the local community and we would also take advice from the
FA on that as well.
Q67 Mr Hall: In terms of the facilities
that are available, I can remember when I used to be a mascot
of a local club in my home town and I used to go anyway to watch
football matches, and I still do, that some of the facilities
then were pretty grim. How many more football pitches do we need
to ensure that we have got sufficient provision for the number
of clubs that we expect to come through the girls' and women's
game which is clearly growing at a fantastic rate? If we are actually
going to allow this opportunity to reach its full potential, we
will need more football pitches.
Mr Thorogood: Again I will refer
to the fact that the Football Association are the lead as the
national governing body and they have a very explicit and detailed
plan. They have recently done independent research on the number
of people playing football and who are likely to play football
in the future. However, what I would say is that it is our role
to make sure that we satisfy the requirement in terms of building
facilities, we make sure, and you talked about archaic facilities,
but we are really about making sure that we get 21st Century facilities
to support the FA's development plan for both women and girls
and men and boys.
Q68 Mr Hall: What success have you
had with local authorities because they are primarily the provider
of municipal facilities? Are you getting a good response from
local authorities or are you meeting with resistance?
Mr Thorogood: Well, 70% of the
facilities are owned by local authorities in one way or another,
parish councils or sometimes the MoD. It would be fair to say
that some are very, very good and it would be fair to say that
some are not so good, but we are trying to work very hard and
again the Football Association has its regional development managers
that we work very closely with. We ourselves, as I said, are pushing
more of our staff out into the regions to work with the regional
development authorities and Sport England and the Football Association
development managers.
Q69 Mr Hall: In your opening statement
you said you do not discriminate in terms of the grants that are
available. Do you think you could have some positive discrimination
to encourage women's football to grow and for the facilities to
be developed properly and at an accelerated pace?
Mr Thorogood: From the evidence
we have heard this morning, I do not think there is necessarily
a problem with women and girls wanting to play football, so I
do not think there is an issue there.
Q70 Mr Hall: There is a problem with
them accessing the money and the money is a very important point
for them, is it not? Without the money, there will not be any.
Mr Thorogood: I would return to
our premise, that we do not discriminate across any kind of agenda
and we make sure, if it is a multi-ethnic project or it is a disability
project or it is an equity problem, that whatever grant aid we
distribute is going to be used by women and girls and men and
boys.
Q71 Helen Southworth: Can I ask you
who administers the Football Youth Development Programme? I do
not know who it is, so I was wondering, do you know?
Mr Thorogood: It is not the Football
Foundation.
Q72 Helen Southworth: Some of the
evidence we have been given is about the need for capacity-building,
and I think certainly after the Women's Euro 2005 a lot of work
was done into the need for capacity-building, but the bit I am
particularly interested in is that it marked out the North West
and, as a Member of Parliament for the North West with constituents
who are telling me that they have very restricted access to women's
and girls' football, I am very interested to know what you are
going to do about it, well, whether you agree with it, first of
all and, if you do, how you are going to address it?
Mr Thorogood: Are you asking me
whether it is specifically for women's and girls' football or
all facilities generally?
Q73 Helen Southworth: Women's and
girls' football.
Mr Thorogood: Again I would refer
back to the fact that we would not wish to discriminate. We have
recognised certain areas and specifically where we have seen an
increase of interest in clubs which are trying to generate women's
and girls' football teams from within their own groups, we would
support those. We have supported those and other specific women's
facilities to the tune of £9.8 million.
Q74 Helen Southworth: I have not
asked you the question extensively enough. What has been said
to me is that there is an inadequate current provision in the
North West and the implication is that it is more inadequate than
perhaps in some of the other regions for women's and girls' football.
I am wondering whether you have actually got an analysis of what
current provision there is across the regions because you can
discriminate accidentally and if your grants process is dependent
on people making applications, you actually end up discriminating
accidentally, so it is really to see how you are addressing that.
Ms Fitzgerald: We have recently,
following on what Paul said, got more staff actually in the regions
and also about, I think, eight months ago our monitoring and evaluation
team invested as well because we have identified that that is
a real key thing, to actually map what is going on, where the
areas of need are, and it is essential for us then to be able
to almost go out and be more proactive and identify that that
might be the best region for our staff to really publicise the
opportunities of the Foundation, so we are working on that process.
We are also looking at investing in the community and education
team and it is quite exciting that they have just agreed to four
additional members of staff in our area of work, and that is what
I am particularly passionate about, to actually go out there,
map what is going on across the country and identify that for
women and girls, for example, that might be the best place for
us to focus our efforts, so we are in the middle of doing that
at the moment.
Mr Thorogood: To support Clare,
it is true to say that in the first few years of the Foundation's
life, we were very much on a receive mode, reactive, and we launched
the Foundation and the next morning the phone was ringing and
has never stopped. I arrived and I think it was time to take stock.
I think if you are in reacting mode, there is a threat that you
will end up just giving money out as required if you meet the
criteria and then you do get a mismatch across the country. We
do keep records and we do keep monitoring and an evaluation of
exactly how much we have spent in a particular region and on what,
and we could provide that for you. As I said before, I have just
initiated a strategic review of what the Football Foundation is
about and where we want to place ourselves and there is absolutely
no doubt that we will probably be more leaning forward, more proactive,
in recognising that the North West requirement is probably different
from the North East and the South and it is understanding by region
exactly what the requirement is and not offering a cookie-cutter
solution, if you like.
Q75 Philip Davies: I do not know
if you were here for the first session, but Wendy Owen, I think
it was, was saying that people contact her and the situation that
she described of facilities in the 1960s, they are still coming
up against exactly the same problems now that they did back then.
Given all this stuff that you are doing, is that an indictment
of you, or is it a fact that the amount of money you have got
to spend is only scratching the surface and making very little
difference? Why are we still in that situation now given all the
efforts that you have been making?
Mr Thorogood: The Football Foundation
has been going for six years and, as I said, the first thing we
did was map the UK in terms of facilities. I believe we have made
huge inroads in providing modern facilities. There is still a
huge way to go yet and there are undoubtedly facilities still
out there which need to be upgraded. Whilst we are being proactive
and we are going out to actively encourage local authorities,
regional development agencies and Sport England to come forward
for grant aid, at the end of the day those people who run those
organisations, whether it be local authorities or private clubs,
are entitled to come to the Football Foundation and upgrade their
facilities.
Q76 Philip Davies: When might they
stop getting people ringing up, saying, "We're facing the
same problems now that we did in the 1960s"? How long is
it going to take them to get rid of that particular—
Mr Thorogood: I would be quite
happy to get together with Wendy and explain to Wendy that when
she gets those questions, she should give them my business card
and my number and we will try and help them as best we can.
Chairman: We will do that. Thank you
very much indeed.
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