Examination of Witnesses (Questions 339
- 359)
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2008
MS JENNIE
PRICE AND
MR SEAN
HOLT
Chairman: Good morning. This is a further
session of the Committee's inquiry into the impact of the London
2012 Games and we are focusing this morning particularly on the
effect on the wider participation in sport. We were intending
to take evidence this morning from the Minister for the Olympics
but sadly she is indisposed. We will be seeking to re-schedule
with her in due course. However, we are still looking forward
to hearing from the Minister for Sport, but before him I would
like to welcome from Sport England Jennie Price, the Chief Executive
and Sean Holt, the Director for London.
Q339 Mr Sanders:
Sport England is going through fairly turbulent times. Is it in
good enough shape—in terms of skills and morale—to
be able to make the most of the 2012 Olympics?
Ms Price: It is absolutely true
that we have had a great deal of change in Sport England recently.
However, I think the most recent events, with a very clear sense
of direction stated for us by the Secretary of State, a combination
of sports development and participation, mean that we have a sharpness
of focus that gives us a very good prospect of being able to deliver.
In terms of morale, the staff morale inside the organisation is
quite strong. I think that the sports development agenda is at
least in part responsible for that because we have many people
for whom that is their natural home and their experience and they
very much welcome the change. I think we are also managing to
recruit some senior people who have got good skills to help us.
So I am confident that we can make an extremely good effort at
delivering a strong legacy.
Q340 Mr Sanders:
When do you expect that a new Chair will be appointed?
Ms Price: The process of appointing
the chair is being done by the normal public appointments process
and it is being run by the Department. There was an advertisement
published just before Christmas. We are anticipating that a new
permanent Chair will be in place within the next few months.
Q341 Mr Sanders:
Do you not think that, in comparison to the sports bodies that
cover the other nations, Scotland and Wales, Sport England is
actually at a disadvantage because it covers such a big area?
Would it not be better if perhaps its functions, its organisation
and its budgets were regionalised to be closer to the areas that
they provide services for?
Ms Price: I think that the link
between what is going on at regional and sub-regional level is
absolutely crucial, particularly when you are working on participation.
As you may know, Sport England does have a regional structure
with nine regional offices and the main function of those offices
is to make sure they know what is going on on the ground, that
they do have appropriate contacts with people like the Regional
Development Agencies, the Government Offices and of course, crucially,
local authorities who deliver so much sport. Without a strong
sense of connectivity at regional and sub-regional level I think
it would be challenging for us, but because we have that network
I think we are able to do a good job.
Q342 Mr Sanders:
Why not just devolve the budget to that regional level? Rather
than just having a presence in a region, why not actually have
an organisation proper in a region that responds to that region's
sporting needs?
Ms Price: My view is that you
need a combination. I think that you need people on the ground
who really understand what is going on in the regions. I also
think there are certain types of skills where when you aggregate
up to national level then you can have more impact. For example,
we have very senior planning advisers sitting centrally who support
our regional colleagues in their day-to-day work on planning.
I also think to have an overall strategic thrust is very important.
It is quite easy in an area as challenging and diverse as community
sport to do a lot of things without making a lot of impact. I
think we need to make sure centrally that the different interventions
really do add up to a substantial impact.
Q343 Adam Price:
Your former Chair resigned because he disagreed with the decision
to downgrade the focus of Sport England on physical recreational
activity. Sport England has done some important work in that area,
has it not?
Ms Price: Sport England certainly
has done a number of projects which look specifically at physical
activity and which combine sport and physical activity, that is
right.
Q344 Adam Price:
Who is going to be responsible for that work now? Who is going
to build on the work that you have done? Is it being shifted to
another department?
Ms Price: We have a very clear
direction as an organisation from the Secretary of State that
our focus is sport. At the same time the Secretary of State made
the announcement about our focus he also talked about cross-government
discussions and who would be responsible for physical activity
and how that would be delivered. I understand that the Chief Secretary
to the Treasury is leading those discussions and that they include,
among others, the Department of Health. I am not party to those
discussions at the moment so I am afraid I do not have a lot of
detail about them.
Q345 Adam Price:
It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare to me. It certainly does
not sound like joined-up government. Let us take the example of
cycling. How are you going to separate out cycling as a sport
from cycling as a recreational activity?
Ms Price: I think it is important
that we do draw lines. As far as cycling is concerned, when we
were concerned with both sport and physical activity we needed
to distinguish between utility cycling, ie people cycling to work
and people cycling for recreational sport purposes. So with some
activities there will always be a very broad continuum with competitive
sport at one end and very casual engagement or engagement for
transport purposes at the other, and cycling and walking are the
two that most definitely fall into that category. We have talked
to British Cycling about how we might work with them under our
current umbrella. They have responded very positively to it. They
are happy with the link between sport participation and sport
development that we now have. They are happy that provided there
is a clear definition as to who is responsible for what they can
deal with the boundary. I should perhaps also say that it is crucial
we have a very good, positive and communicating relationship with
whoever does deal with physical activity.
Q346 Adam Price:
Is not physical recreation the entry point for some people into
participation in sport, and in making this distinction are you
not making it more difficult to encourage your grassroots participation
agenda in the long run?
Ms Price: It is the entry point
for many people. The governing bodies who deal with those sorts
of activities and sports like cycling are extremely conscious
of that. What they try and do is to identify the people for whom
it will only ever be a cycle ride round the park compared to the
people who are interested in doing it in a more organised or a
more intensive fashion, and we need to work with them to make
sure that we are working on the sport elements of that and that
is the people who operate in the more organised environment.
Q347 Chairman:
Is it the case that previously walking and jogging were regarded
by Sport England as sports but that they are now no longer regarded
as sports?
Ms Price: We had a definition
which encompassed both sport and physical activity in terms of
what we measured and so we did not have to distinguish really
between sport and physical activity, it was what we counted and
what we did not count. Walking was included provided it was over
30 minutes in duration and done at moderate intensity. If you
went for a wander down the street that would not be classed as
sport. If you do it such that you get your heartbeat raised that
is moderate intensity and that would count. Jogging would count
in any event.
Chairman: Obviously a new Secretary of
State is perfectly entitled to look at all of the activities of
his Department and say that he wishes to change the focus in some
areas, but it would be right to say that the previous Secretary
of State set you off in one direction and now you are being sent
off in a different direction, would it not?
Q348 Adam Price:
At a moderate pace!
Ms Price: Certainly the previous
Secretary of State had set us Public Service Agreement targets
and we have been working with his Department to deliver specific
targets that were about sport and physical activity. We now have
the clearest possible direction from our current Secretary of
State that Sport England is about sport and it is about a combination
of participation in sport and sports development. So there is
a shift there, but there is a very definite relationship between
what we were previously pursuing and what we are now pursuing.
Many of the interventions we would make would be similar in terms
of club structure, coaches and volunteers, et cetera.
Q349 Mr Hall:
Let us explore the Lottery funding that Sport England are responsible
for distributing. In 2006-07 you drew down £81 million less
than the previous year in Lottery funds. Was that by design or
by accident?
Ms Price: You are absolutely right
that we did draw down less. There are three components of that
£80 million. The first element of it is £31.1 million,
which was a transfer to UK Sport, which reflected the transfer
of the elite responsibilities to them. There was a £20 million
decline in the amount of money available to us from the Lottery
for that year which was due to a larger decline in the amount
that was available to the NLDF, to the good causes as a whole,
and the balancing £30 million was not drawn down in this
year but it was committed in that particular year and that was
two sorts of projects. We were at that point setting up our county
sports partnerships, of which there are 49. We had anticipated
being able to spend rather more in setting those up that year
than we were able to. They needed more help and development and
so that was spent in a subsequent year. Similarly, part of the
£30 million reflects community projects where we needed to
work more with applicants, so the money was committed not spent.
In terms of overall impact, £31 million went somewhere else,
£30 million was spent but was not spent in that year and
£20 million was money that was not available to us in the
first place because of what had happened to the amounts available
to good causes.
Q350 Mr Hall:
Are the figures going to be adjusted or is that explanation just
the way it is? The figures are £183 million in 2005-06 and
£132 million in 2006-07, but clearly that is not accurate,
is it, from what you have just said?[1]
Ms Price: The events that I have
described are what caused that difference. I am obviously very
happy to make sure that is properly understood and well on the
public record.
Q351 Mr Hall:
We have not got figures for 2007-08 yet. Do you have those for
the Committee now?
Ms Price: Yes. For 2007-08 our
Lottery funding will be £126.4 million.
Q352 Mr Hall:
So that is a further decline?
Ms Price: That is a small decline,
yes. The figure for 2006-07 is £132 million.
Q353 Mr Hall:
Are there any examples where programmes and bodies have been receiving
less funding because of a reduction in the amount of money available?
Ms Price: I am not aware of any.
Obviously we look at the bids that we get with the amount of overall
funding that we have in mind. The significant diversion in funding
due to the Olympics has not yet taken effect so that has not affected
our funding decisions. I am not aware of any specific projects
where we have said we will not fund them because we do not have
the money available. There may be something to do with the quality
of the project or timing, but it is not because we simply do not
have the Lottery funding.
Q354 Mr Hall:
Have you not made it more difficult for organisations to bid for
grants by stiffening up the criteria?
Ms Price: No, we have not. I think
it is really important that we are as open as we can be in terms
of the organisations that do approach us for funding. One of the
things I am very keen to do in the implementation of the new strategy
is to make sure that the criteria are clearer and therefore easier
for people to fulfil and also that we make the process they have
to go through as light touch as possible.
Q355 Mr Hall:
What about the Comprehensive Spending Review figures, have they
been announced yet?
Ms Price: Yes. In terms of three-year
funding over the period for the total amount we will receive,
the Exchequer funding is £391.6 million, for 2008-09 it is
£133.2, for 2009-10 it is £130.2 and for 2010-11 it
is £128.2.
Q356 Mr Hall:
If I understand the process properly, you are asked to submit
three bids, minus 5%, baseline and plus 5%. Did you get the baseline
or did you get a bit more?
Ms Price: We got the baseline
plus some extra money for the five hour offer specifically for
young people. We also put in a specific bid for the English Institute
of Sport which was met in full.
Q357 Chairman:
You are looking at almost a halving of the amount of money available
to you over the course of the next three or four years and yet
at the same time DCMS has said that they are going to ensure that
the diversion of Lottery funding is not going to put at risk the
community sport legacy. How are you going to go about cutting
back on your programmes? Is it going to be across the board or
are you going to focus more precisely on particular areas?
Ms Price: I think we will focus
very precisely on what we are delivering. The advantage of being
able to prepare a new strategy for the three-year period that
we are looking at means that we can prepare something which is
proportionate to the resources we have and we can also be very
clear both to our own funding streams and to the partners we work
with exactly what Sport England money is for and I think that
sense of direction is helpful. It is probably worth highlighting
that over the full three-year period we are looking at now in
this spending review period we will have total resources of just
over £740 million, which although is a reduction, it is a
very substantial amount of money with which we should be able
to make a very significant difference if we spend it well and
if we leverage other people's investments. It is worth mentioning
in that context that we do, particularly with our Lottery funding,
target matched funding from other sources and so the size of project
with which we work can be much more substantial than just our
own funding would otherwise indicate.
Q358 Chairman:
On the issue of whether or not you can raise money from the private
sector through sponsorship and other methods of support, all the
witnesses we have had in relation to the Olympics have been seeking
to try and draw in private sector support, that is LOCOG and the
British Olympic Association are. Presumably there is a finite
amount of money out there. Do you think you can attract additional
private sector money?
Ms Price: I think it is a very
fair question and I do think it is an ambitious target. We have
a specific target of £50 million by 2012 for community sport.
The reason that I have some confidence that we are able to deliver
it is I think community sport is a very specific offering which
is attractive to a specific type of corporate body. In my previous
existence on environmental work I worked with a lot of large corporates
where they knew exactly what they wanted to do on the environment
but they genuinely struggled in terms of the community elements
of their programmes to find good things to fund that really did
connect them to local communities. So if you are a utility or
a major supermarket that local community connection is absolutely
crucial to you and I think that is what we can offer. I am also
conscious that many of the smaller sports find it difficult to
put together packages which might be attractive to sponsors. I
think that is something where at the community level we can add
expertise and where we can facilitate. Certainly our Commercial
Director has only been in post for a short period, but he has
had no shortage of people from the private sector approaching
him, interestingly, as well as the amount of people he has had
to go out and approach. Clearly we have to deliver on that promise,
but because of those reasons I am reasonably confident we have
good prospects of doing that.
Q359 Rosemary McKenna:
Let us move on to trying to improve participation, which is everybody's
aim including the Government's. Sport England has not yet had
any success in delivering against the Public Service Agreement
targets to increase participation in active sports among priority
groups, which is the five to 16-year-olds, et cetera. Why
do you think this is?
Ms Price: I think inherently it
is a difficult thing to do. That is no excuse for not achieving
it. I do think understanding the degree of challenge is important
in this. I think you are looking at quite a significant behavioural
change for people. It is not one small simple action you are asking
them to do like recycle or putting on a seatbelt, it is something
that requires a certain amount of effort and attention. I think
sustained effort is needed from us. I think we need to make sure
that the overall infrastructure is in place. That is why I do
welcome the bringing together of the agenda of sports development
and participation because I think if you simply focus on drawing
people into sport but then when they walk into a sports club they
are not welcomed properly, they are not given the basic training
in term of just the skills to do the job, there is not a decent
competitive structure, if that is what they want, they will walk
out of the door again quite quickly. I think it is very important
we have a good strong structure that is welcoming. In terms of
the figures, across adults in the whole of the English population
we are showing 0.9% increase in the one year for which we have
figures, which indicates that it is moving in the right direction,
although I completely appreciate it is not yet meeting the targets.
1 Figures are for Lottery income rather than drawdown
of Lottery funds. Back
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