Community Sports Facilities

Charlotte Leslie Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

So often, sport is limited to the last letter of the DCMS—the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—but sport is much more than that. If we are talking Government Departments, sport reaches into issues that concern Ministers of Health, Education, Business, Innovation and Skills, Work and Pensions and the Home Office.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Charlotte Leslie]

It is a pleasure to resume the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I was talking about the importance of sport, and how it reaches into all sorts of areas that are covered by Ministers in the Department of Health, the Department for Education and the Home Office, and I want to argue that sport, and the way it is managed, is crucial to the Treasury and matters financially to our country. The way that community sport and its facilities have been funded and organised in the past has overlooked the great business and community potential of our nation, and a real opportunity exists.

Seldom has the significance of sport for our country’s well-being been in sharper focus than following the August riots that were carried out by disaffected youth, with the London Olympic games glinting over the horizon. Seldom has the need for a nationwide Olympic sporting legacy of aspiration, effort, achievement, action, consequence and reward, which reaches out to all our communities, been more keenly felt.

The UK is the most obese nation in Europe, and obesity costs the NHS £4 billion a year. Within four years, however, that figure is projected to rise to £6.3 billion. Diabetes is also on the rise. The NHS currently spends £715 million on drugs for diabetes, and by 2025 it has been forecast that 25% of the NHS budget will be spent on diabetes alone. Quite simply, if our NHS is to survive the demands put on it by an ageing population, changing demographics, more expensive treatment and ever-rocketing expectations, our population must change its body mass index and its lifestyle.

Something else is often overlooked. Sport is vital not only because of the calories it burns, but because of the mindset it involves. Crucially, it entails a sense of delayed gratification: if we do not take the easy option now, but do something that initially takes a bit of effort, such as going for a jog instead of having that nice second cup of tea and that slice of cake, that will have benefits later, because we will lose weight and look good in that outfit we want to wear. At the sharp end, it is about what my brilliant former swimming coach Eric Henderson called “no pain, no gain”.

That is important not only for the physical benefits, but for the sense of achievement that comes from making that effort, resisting that cake and reaping the rewards of seeing oneself get fitter and make progress. That starts a virtuous circle of achievement, as we believe and see that we can do something, and that, crucially, is what builds self-esteem. That is where sport is so important for young people, particularly the kind who were involved in the riots over the summer.

I have seen first hand the extraordinary effects that sport can have on young people who are most likely to fall into a lifestyle involving gangs and riots. As the chair of the all-party group on boxing, I have seen how powerful boxing is in turning a kid with all the energy, inclination and anger to riot into a responsible and exemplary role model for other young people. I think of inner-city clubs such as the Riverside youth project in Bristol, which is managed by the amazing Dennis Stinchcombe, and which is sending one of its boxers to the GB team this year. Other sports also have a huge impact, and I will mention them later.

Why does sport work? There is the release of pent-up aggression and energy, the structure and discipline that are often so lacking in young people’s home lives and the respect for role models—often male—which frequently do not exist at home for young people. Crucially, there is also the building of self-discipline, self-respect and self-esteem through a cycle of putting effort in and seeing positive results come out.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend may come to this, but does she agree that where sporting achievement can be measured, so, too, can its positive effect on academic achievement? The one leads to the other, and there is increasing evidence of that. That is another example of how the Government should see these things as an investment, rather than as a cost.

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am making it in a rather long-winded way, but he has made it in far fewer words. The cycle of achievement translates into learning how to get good grades at school by putting effort in and getting achievement out. It also helps people with resisting the easier lifestyle choices that are less good for them in exchange for achieving a better physique and physiology later. That concept of delayed gratification is essential to the concept of achievement, and it is essential if our young people are to fulfil their potential. They have to put that effort in to get the rewards and achieve their life potential.

I turn again to what we saw during the riots. What was striking was that so many of the young people and kids who were rioting talked about having nothing to lose. The reason they did that is that they could not really see they had anything to gain; they did not know how to achieve, and they had no traction on the cycle of achievement. They may have had dreams, and we often talk about dreams in relation to things such as aspiration, but dreams are not the same as goals. Those young people may have had dreams about being a famous footballer, being rich or having a glorious, glamorous wife, but dreams are very different from goals, because dreams are dislocated from reality. Those children could see no way—they had no ladder—to access those dreams.

Goals, however, are embedded in reality, together with some way of getting a rung closer to where we want to be, whether we want to be a famous footballer, to be super-rich or to have or be a glamorous wife, or whether we want to be a nurse, to start a business or to pass our maths GCSE. Not one of our Olympians will have become an Olympian by just dreaming about it; they will have worked—oh my goodness, how they will have worked—and they will have gone training when they did not want to. That sense of delayed gratification—putting effort in now for reward later—is what will lead our Olympians to the gold medals that I hope and expect so many of them will win.

Nationally, I hope there will be a facility to allow our Olympians to tell the inspiring story of the effort and hard work it took them to achieve those goals, which are many people’s dreams. It is important for not just young people, but the whole country to see that greatness comes not by accident, but through great determination and hard work. That message speaks to the country as a whole in the difficult times we face.

We have a huge opportunity. One thing sport is so good at is showing young people how to, and that they can, reach their goals. They can put effort in and get a tangible achievement out. That works especially well for young people who do not find the classroom an easy place to be. They might find the authority in the classroom difficult to take, but they might excel in other areas.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) said, that is where sport touches Departments such as the Department for Education. Young people’s results absolutely rocket when they are engaged through sport. Building self-esteem through sport helps in employment. Sport teaches discipline, resilience and other employability skills. We talk about trying to embed all those skills in the curriculum, and there they all are, embedded in sport. In terms of Home Office concerns, sport provides fantastic behaviour management and can prevent young people from becoming future inmates. The social and financial benefit to society cannot really be measured.

The benefits of the self-esteem, individual resilience, teamwork, delayed gratification and discipline instilled by sport go on and on, although Members may be glad to know that I will not. Instead, I want to turn to another great benefit of sport that is often overlooked: the financial and business potential it holds for the community.

In securing community sport for future generations, we face an opportunity and a tremendous challenge, and those centre on our sports facilities. Here is the challenge. The model of community sport is substantially dependent on local authority initial funding and maintenance funding. That has meant too many run-down, off-putting facilities, and it has claimed sporting casualties among facilities. Some years ago in my constituency, despite a massive community campaign, the council misguidedly sold off the much-needed Robin Cousins sports centre and the Shirehampton swimming pool. Now, the community has no proper local sports facilities and a growing population of increasingly bored youth.

More widely, to take football as an example, the latest Football Association survey found that the overwhelming majority of respondents identified poor local community facilities as their biggest problem. A Football Foundation survey found that of the 45,000 local football pitches that exist, 38% did not have changing rooms, 94% had no floodlights, 80% were badly drained and out of use in the winter months, and only 1% had the third-generation artificial pitches that can be used for 90 hours a week, as opposed to just four.

Let me illustrate the point more graphically. In another area of my constituency, Henbury Old Boys football club is struggling to raise funds for much-needed renovations to the clubhouse, facilities and changing rooms. Shirehampton football club is thinking of moving away from its much-loved home ground, which is at the heart of the community, and its clubhouse, which was built by the members themselves, because it cannot progress in the league without floodlights for its pitch, and it cannot get them.

One does not need to be a mathematician to work out what the dilapidation of existing facilities is doing to participation rates.

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has tripped across this yet, but I will mention it before we move on. Part of the Places People Play scheme is a sub-£50,000 grant scheme, to which more than 600 clubs have applied. It exists precisely to try to tackle the problems she has itemised. It has been phenomenally popular; in fact, it is the most successful facilities scheme Sport England says it has ever run. My advice to the football club in her area that is struggling with its changing rooms is to make sure it puts in a grant application. The scheme is called Inspired Facilities and it is part of the Places People Play programme run by Sport England. My hon. Friend should encourage the club to put in an application.

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank the Minister for that, and will certainly do so. I will come on to what the Government have been doing to recognise the issue in question, and the tremendous investment that they have focused towards it.

The Football Foundation’s research from last season shows that where new investment, such as that suggested by the Minister, took place at a community sports facility, participation increased on average by more than 10%. The sad truth is that often, as cuts hit, local authorities sometimes choose to make cuts to their front-line services and sports facilities, or to hike up charges dramatically, shutting out those on low incomes. To go back to what the Minister said, it is welcome and brilliant that the Government have acted so swiftly and strongly to meet the important challenge of investing in community sports facilities. They have pledged enormous, much needed Government investment in those facilities.

Our national lottery reforms have, I believe, brought an additional £135 million for upgrading community sports clubs and facilities. We are linking schools and sports clubs more effectively, helping schools to offer more of their facilities for community use, which is extremely welcome. Schools’ facilities have for so long been shut to the communities that want to use them. The Government are linking up local sports clubs with schools so that the schools can benefit in their turn from the tremendous expertise and dynamism that community sports clubs offer. That has been quite a long time in coming, and it is welcome that the Government have grasped the nettle and linked those two valuable resources.

Additionally, there is a £400 million local sport fund for local authorities, to help with local sports provision, and a further fund of, I believe, about £100 million, for upgrading such facilities as swimming pools. As a former swimmer I have a particular interest in such projects. The achievement is superb, and is a gratifying indication that the Government see sport’s importance and consider it a priority. I am pleased with the investment that they are putting in.

It is vital that that investment does not just build facilities—buildings. If we run facilities as we have always run them we shall get what we have always got: a welcome initial investment and, in the long term, an expensive continuing drain on state funds, which may not always be made available to meet the need. Not only do we need to build and upgrade facilities; we need to build social enterprises. We need to ensure that we build not only facilities but an entire social enterprise model, involving the community, business expertise and smart corporate financial and human capital investment, so that the facilities do not become sponges on precious local authority funding and maintenance grants, but will instead be vibrant centres of the community, using profitable elements of the enterprise to subsidise the loss-making elements that the community needs so much.

The good news is, as colleagues have already told me, that that is already happening. However, it needs to happen more, and it can. Community sports trusts already exist, and the charity the Football Foundation is doing interesting work on providing some kind of model for change. Football is the most popular sport in the country, but 33% of the foundation’s effort in sport goes beyond football; so, for those who are not so into football, it is not just about that. The foundation’s idea works on making an initial investment but also helping to build and support a sustainable hub around a facility, such as a crèche in the club house or better use of bar facilities, including sport on TV, to make a profit that can be pumped into maintaining and improving the facility.

Corporate social responsibility is also an enormous opportunity. Funds cannot be better used than to invest in community sport, but often we also need to think smarter about how we use the expertise of those who work in our large corporates. We should encourage corporates to demonstrate corporate social responsibility by making links so that their staff can mentor and give time to local sports clubs and enterprises. When better than the Olympic year to start something of that kind?

One of the football clubs that I have visited in the Bristol area has been extraordinarily successful in community fundraising, and in building a social enterprise model around the club. One of its secrets is that there was someone on the board whose day job was project management and fundraising. In the face of the decimation by Bristol city council of much-loved sports facilities in Shirehampton, Avonmouth’s National Smelting Co amateur boxing club, run by Garry Cave in his spare time after work, has raised funds to build a new gym to accommodate the ever-increasing number of boxers who want to take part. It did it by pooling the expertise and resources of parents, helpers and supporters. In fewer than two years a brand new and far bigger club was up and running, and well oversubscribed. That is a success story, but it was and is still very tough going, and corporate support would be a massive help.

Such corporate support is already happening. As far as I have been able to see, Barclays has demonstrated good and innovative use of corporate support in its Spaces for Sports investment. What struck me when I visited its facilities was that what I saw was not just about capital investment unleashing participation in sport; it was also about creating and supporting an enterprise for the long term, driven and managed by the community. One of the things said again and again in communities affected by the riots was that facilities owned by the community, with community involvement, escaped the vandalism and damage. That sense of community ownership is massively important.

Money and skills are certainly something we need more of. [Interruption.] I need a drink of water. [Interruption.]

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

To assist the hon. Lady I could offer an intervention.

[Charlotte Leslie]

That is very gentlemanly.

[Mr Donaldson]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her remarks, to which I have been listening intently. We find in Northern Ireland that a benefit from sport is its capacity to unite a community that is divided—in our case by sectarianism, but often in Great Britain by ethnic differences and so on. Would the hon. Lady consider the positive effects that sport can have in bringing communities together, particularly where there is a history of conflict, but also in areas where there are gangs or criminality?

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman not only for his chivalrous intervention but for the excellent point he made. It is true in Bristol that there are areas with opposing gangs, and it is difficult to bring those groups together, but local sports and the boxing club have managed that against all the odds, and things are being done that many people would say could not happen. I agree that the community cohesion that sport can bring is spectacular.

I hope that the House will forgive me if I tend to cough during the rest of my speech.

Sport not only provides an opportunity for large corporates such as Barclays to hone the effectiveness of their corporate social responsibility; it also, crucially, provides a great opportunity for small business and economic growth. At a time when small building companies are struggling, and we need to get young people into apprenticeships and provide opportunities in the construction industry, what I have outlined is a great way to do it. Small and medium-sized enterprises make up 99.7% of the UK’s construction industry, and up to 11 construction firms go bust every day. The Government have already identified construction programmes as a key way of stimulating the economy, and have focused on house building. That is very well and good, but developing new and upgraded sports facilities also provides many SMEs with a crucial lifeline, so that a range of subcontractors, such as architects, electricians, carpenters and plumbers can survive. For example, a relatively small project in Essex, funded by the Football Foundation with a grant of just over £250,000, which for the foundation is relatively modest, enabled the Lawford juniors football club to get a new changing pavilion. In addition, that project alone employed 35 different subcontractors, three quarters of them local, and two apprentices.

Although times are tough, we face a tremendous opportunity. Sport is already one of the nation’s greatest examples of the big society, with thousands of individuals giving up time to volunteer at local clubs. It is superb that the Government—I pay tribute to the Minister—are investing so robustly to protect and support the Olympic legacy. That is a much needed springboard for sport. However, we still need to rethink sport’s dependency on the state, to safeguard its future. The readiness, skills and need certainly exist to build excellent sporting facilities for future generations that are sustainable, vibrant social enterprises bringing growth to communities, and are assets to, not drains on, strained local authorities.

We need to combine the backing of Government, the expertise and action of charities, such as the Football Foundation, and smart CSR—that is, money and skills—from Britain’s businesses, such as that which I saw from Barclays, with our existing community sport network to safeguard and promote sport into the future. What better year in which to pull all those together than the Olympic year of 2012?