The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
As Minister responsible for sport, I am committed to delivering a lasting sports legacy from London 2012 for all. For the last time in this Parliament, I would like to update the House on progress on the Government’s sport legacy plan since October last year.
While I was disappointed by the headline figure, and in particular the decline in the number of people swimming, I was pleased to see that the latest figures from the active people survey show there are 1.6 million more people playing sport regularly since we won the bid for the games in 2005 and there were year-on-year increases for team sports such as football, rugby union and cricket.
I am committed to ensuring that Sport England’s investment of over £1 billion into improving grass-roots sport delivers real results. I have recently spoken to underperforming sports and Sport England will focus on programmes specifically targeted at what women, disabled people, people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds or low socio-economic groups need and want. Sports governing bodies have been left in no doubt that public funding to them is a privilege and not a right.
Since my last update, we have hosted the Government’s first national women and sport conference on 30 October 2014. At the conference, Sport England launched “This Girl Can”, a £10 million national lottery-funded campaign to get more women and girls active, whatever their age, shape or ability. The campaign seeks to tackle the barriers that stop women and girls from taking part in sport. So far, the video has had over 16 million views on YouTube and Facebook, and 3,600 partners have engaged with the campaign.
Also in October, Sport England and UK Sport agreed a package to fund British basketball teams and help talent development in the sport. Sport England will provide £1.18 million-worth of Exchequer and national lottery funding to British basketball to support the men’s, women’s, under 20s men’s and women’s teams from November 2014 to March 2017.
Later this month, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and UK Sport will publish a joint major events framework setting out how Government will continue to work strategically alongside key stakeholders to secure and deliver a portfolio of major sporting events for the UK.
In December, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a new £50 million package of Government investment into improving grass-roots football focused on local community multi-sport facilities and football coaching. The Government have dedicated £8 million of funding per year, for five years, toward 150 multi-sport hubs across 30 cities. In addition, a further £2 million per year, for five years, will support 25 new coach educators that can help triple the number of high-level coaches nationally and a bursary scheme to fund qualifications, with specific targets for female coaches and coaches from a black and minority ethnic background. The Government investment will be matched by the Football Association, alongside further contributions from other partners such as the Premier League and Football League clubs and local authorities with a shared ambition for over £200 million of total funding.
In February this year, Sport England launched “Club Matters”, a £3.6 million programme, which offers a range of online resources and is a one-stop shop to support club administrators and volunteers who make sport happen in their communities. Clubs who register can get access to seminars, e-learning and mentoring from business professionals. All the tools and support are quick and easy to access and free for clubs to use.
The UK continues to host a number of major sporting events, including at some of the country’s newest venues on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Since October, international events held on the Olympic park have included NEC wheelchair tennis masters at Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre; the UCI track cycling world cup at Lee Valley VeloPark and England versus Malawi international netball at Copper Box arena.
This year England will be the proud host of the IRB rugby world cup, the third biggest sporting event in the world. I am pleased to say that ticket sales have been excellent and the event is estimated to generate a boost of almost £1 billion to the UK’s GDP, including £85 million of infrastructure projects and the support of 41,000 jobs. We also expect there to be more international visitors coming to the country than at any previous rugby world cup.
Elite sport
There has been a £2.3 million boost to summer Paralympic sports as a result of UK Sport’s annual investment review process. The results saw wheelchair fencing re-admitted to the world-class performance programme.
As part of the continued Government funding for elite sport to 2016, all funded athletes have been asked to give up to five days a year to inspire children and young people to get involved in sport. UK Sport’s most recent survey of this activity, completed in December 2014, revealed that athletes had given more than 10,000 days to community and school sport since London 2012.
World-class facilities
All venues on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are now open, with the exception of the stadium which is undergoing transformation work until 2016, when it will become the home of West Ham United football club and the national competition centre for UK athletics.
All the sporting venues on the park provide world-class facilities at affordable rates and run extensive school and community programmes, as well as host major sporting events throughout the year.
The venues are proving to be extremely popular. Since opening in March 2014 the London Aquatics Centre has attracted more than 650,000 visitors and Lee Valley VeloPark has attracted more than 360,000 visitors. Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre has a busy club and schools programme: four hockey clubs play out of the centre and five university clubs have regular bookings. Seven schools have regular bookings at the centre, while pupils from 50 schools across the region took part in free hockey and tennis activities in October’s schools festival.
Building on the success of 2014—which saw the arrival of the Tour de France, the Invictus games and the Queen’s baton on the park—2015 promises more major sporting events. The rugby world cup will stage five matches in the stadium and the London Aquatics Centre will host both the British swimming championships and FINA world diving.
“Active People, Active Park” is the London Legacy Development Corporation’s flagship programme to promote physical activity on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and continues to deliver free sporting opportunities on and around the park for the communities in the vicinity. So far, 35,000 people have taken part in sporting activities as a result of this programme. “Motivate East” is a programme run by the London Legacy Development Corporation in partnership with Sport England and other local partners to provide disability sport opportunities in east London; more than 22,000 sporting opportunities have been delivered since February 2013.
Major sporting events
Over 70 major international sporting events have been secured for the UK following the London 2012 games, including over 30 world and European championships. Earlier this year we were successful in securing the 2019 netball world cup and since October we have successfully hosted several events, including the WTF world taekwondo grand prix series in Manchester and the ITF wheelchair tennis singles masters series at the Olympic park. Later this year we will proudly host the rugby world cup and world artistic gymnastics, among other events.
We continue to strive towards identifying and securing events and in March the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will publish a major sporting events framework, setting out how the UK will continue to support events.
Places people play
Sport England has invested £10 million into 148 local sport facilities through the latest round of its Inspired Facilities Fund, which were announced in October 2014. Sport England has now invested £100 million through Inspired Facilities to upgrade over 1,800 sports clubs.
Since my last update, East Manchester leisure centre has opened. The new leisure centre is part of the Beswick community hub, which has been developed in partnership with Manchester City football club and Sport England. Sport England invested £2 million of national lottery investment through its iconic facilities fund, an Olympic legacy fund which invested £36 million into 26 state of the art sports hubs, providing the right facilities in the right places.
Youth sport strategy
The latest active people survey results saw an increase in the number of 16 to 25-year-olds playing sport regularly, with 3.78 million young people playing sport once a week. This is an increase of 133,400 since 2005 when London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.
Satellite Clubs is Sport England’s £49 million programme that brings community sports clubs into schools and colleges. With over 3,600 clubs already up and running, Sport England is on track to meet its target of setting up 5,000 clubs by 2017. There are over 480 clubs, which are girls only, and Sport England estimates that through these clubs over 18,000 girls are playing sport regularly.
Sportivate is Sport England’s £56 million national lottery-funded Olympic legacy programme which, since June 2011, has reached half a million 11 to 25-year-olds and introduced them to sport through a six to eight-week coaching course. The coaching courses offer over 80 sports, including traditional sports like football, cricket and rugby, and also activities like windsurfing, parkour and skateboarding.
Sport for Development
We have increased our work on Sport for Development, recognising the important role that sport can play in achieving other policy priorities, for example helping promote employability and skill development as well as developing social cohesion and self-confidence.
In November, I hosted a round-table with organisations delivering Sport for Development. The key message from this was the need for better measurement and evaluation of these programmes. Sport England subsequently commissioned the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam university to establish a common measurement framework for the sector which will assist organisations in evidencing their impact and assist in future funding applications.
A subsequent round-table last month showed that real progress had been made and the sector were developing their own narrative and working closely together.
Separately we have also provided funding to some Sport for Development projects, including those run by Sussex county cricket club, Street League and the Change Foundation.
Volunteering
Join In has continued apace with volunteer recruitment with over 250 local leaders now trained, enabling more people than ever to become involved with grass-roots sports clubs through the 30 established local networks.
In January 2015, 694 volunteering opportunities were added to the existing 19,000 volunteering opportunities on www.joininuk.org. These opportunities are accessible to over 100,000 Join In registered volunteers and are actively promoted by local leaders.
Join In continued to work with national broadcasters, highlighting volunteer opportunities through ITV and partnering BBC sport personality of the year with #The Big Thank You. During the live broadcast, high-profile sports personalities were approached and asked to call sports club volunteers to thank them for their input, the success of which trended globally on Twitter.
School games
The School games is Government’s framework for competitive school sport, which aims to give every schoolchild, no matter their ability or disability, the chance to participate in high-quality competitive sport. The School games offer intra-school, inter-school, county festivals and national finals competition for school children.
The School games national finals 2014 were held in Manchester on 4 to 7 September. A total of 1,600 athletes competed in 12 sports in venues across the city. With more than 20,000 spectators and more than 400 volunteers, the event provided an opportunity to highlight the importance of youth sport. The games have been a launch pad for many elite athletes—for example, 150 of the competitors at the recent Commonwealth games in Glasgow had taken part in the School games previously.
As of 10 January 2015, 16,491 schools were actively engaged in the School games. Manchester has been confirmed as the venue for the 2015 finals.
PE and school sport
The primary spaces facilities fund will enable 601 schools to improve their outdoor facilities and create spaces that will inspire and encourage pupils to take part in play.
Schools were awarded grants up to £30,000. All 601 schools have their projects planned this year; they are being installed in five waves throughout the academic year. Approximately 150 projects have now been completed with children enjoying their newly enhanced outdoor facility.
In October last year, Ofsted published a survey report on the primary school sport premium looking at the first year of delivery of the primary PE and sport fund. The results were positive showing lots of good practice and that, in the majority of schools visited, head teachers were using the funding to make improvements to PE and sport. The report highlighted the need for clearer guidance for schools, which has now been taken up by the Department for Education.
Disability sport legacy
Sport England continued its support for disability sport investing £2 million into seven national disability sports organisations to help more people access sport. The funding will provide impairment-specific support to national governing bodies and deliver engagement programmes. This is part of a package of over £170 million that Sport England is investing to get more disabled people playing sport.
International sport
The international element of our sporting legacy has drawn to a close with the conclusion of the successful international inspiration programme.
Delivered through a unique and highly successful partnership between UK Sport, the British Council, UNICEF UK and the newly established legacy charity International Inspiration it exceeded many of its goals, in particular reaching 15.6 million children and young people against a target of 12 million across 20 countries.
The British Council had particular responsibility for delivering the physical education elements in schools, which included capacity building with practitioners, working with young leaders aged 14 to 19 years old, and developing school partnerships between the UK and overseas International Inspiration programme countries. In addition, the British Council built relationships with ministries to achieve policy change.
I would like to thank all those involved in delivering a first-class programme and wish the International Inspiration charity continued success in the future.
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