Helen Grant
Main Page: Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and Malling)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
In July the Government and the Mayor of London published “Inspired by 2012”. This report detailed the range of impressive legacy benefits from London 2012 that had been delivered one year on from the games.
As Minister responsible for sport and equalities, I am committed to delivering a lasting sports legacy from London 2012 for all. I would like to update the House on progress with the delivery of the sport legacy action plan since then. The June “active people survey” showed 15.3 million people doing sport at least once a week, every week. That is 1.4 million more people doing sport than when we won the bid in 2005. There was a slight dip in figures for the previous six months, due to the exceptionally cold weather in January and March.
The meta-evaluation of the 2012 games impact and legacy benefits was published in July. Some 36% of children aged five to 10, 52% of children aged 11 to 15, and 25% of young adults aged 16 to 24 reported that the games had motivated them to do more sport.
The annual children participation figures published in “Taking Part” in September remained largely unchanged since 2008-09. While some measures showed a slight decrease, there had been a significant increase since 2010-11 in the rate of 11 to 15-year-olds who had played cricket, dodgeball, rounders, tennis, table tennis, basketball, badminton and taken part in cross-country, jogging or road running and athletics.
Elite Sport
Elite Funding
In June, UK Sport published the medal targets for summer Olympic and Paralympic sports for their targeted competition events in 2013. UK Sport continues to track their progress towards Rio 2016.
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 first survey of this activity, published in July 2013, revealed that athletes had given more than 4,000 days to community and school sport since London 2012.
World-class Facilities
Good progress continues to be made on the transformation of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park. All eight of the park venues, including the five sporting venues, now have operators in place, to manage each of the facilities as the park reopens to the public between now and 2014.
The Copper Box arena reopened in July this year and the London Lions British basketball league team will host 21 games for the 2013-14 season.
Major Sports Events
The UK has had an excellent summer of sport. Major events supported by the UK Sport Gold series include:
June |
International Cricket Council Champions Trophy |
Canoe Slalom, World Cup Series |
Rowing World Cup Series |
European Athletics Team Championships |
Hockey World League |
IPC Para-Athletics Grand Prix Final |
July |
London Anniversary Games Athletics and Para Athletics |
August |
World Youth Netball Championships |
September |
Triathlon World Championship Series Final |
October |
London Grand Prix Badminton |
Rugby League World Cup |
November |
UCI Track Cycling World Cup Series |
We have also secured the right to host the following major sports events:
World Cup Gymnastics | 2013 |
Taekwondo Grand Prix | 2013 |
Triathlon World Championships Series | 2014 |
IPC European Athletics Championships | 2014 |
BMX Supercross World Cup | 2014 |
European Judo Championships | 2015 |
European Wheelchair Basketball Championships | 2015 |
Track Cycling World Championships | 2016 |
European Swimming Championships | 2016 |
We are currently bidding to host more events including:
FINA Diving World Series | 2014 |
European Modern Pentathlon Championships | 2015 |
World Indoor Athletics Championships | 2016 |
World Half Marathon Championships | 2016 |
Men’s Champions Trophy Hockey | 2016 |
Men’s World League Hockey | 2017 |
Women’s Hockey World Cup | 2018 |
Community
Places People Play
Some 1,361 grassroots sports facilities have now benefited from nearly £70 million of Sport England investment.
In August, Sport England announced an extra £40 million to extend the popular Inspired Facilities fund to 2017.
Over 83,408 sport makers are now volunteering regularly in their local communities. The programme officially ended on 30 September, but Sport England will continue to support the volunteers.
Another 30,000 14 to 25-year-olds have completed the 6-8 week Sportivate coaching course, bringing the total number trying new sports to 256,297. Some 80% of these have continued to play regularly since completion of the course.
Youth Sport Strategy
There are now over 1,181 satellite clubs in secondary schools. One hundred of these are for girls only.
More than 102,000 students have tried sport in the past year thanks to Sport England’s Active Universities programme, surpassing its initial target by more than 20,000.
Join In
Join In had a target of supporting 10,000 events, across the UK, with 75% of them focusing on sport organisations and the remainder on community activities. They also hosted the “Go Local” event on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park which aimed to encourage 2012 volunteers to continue to inspire others to volunteer. An evaluation of the summer is currently under way and will be published near the end of the year.
School Games
Some 18,253 schools have registered for the school games, of which 15,342 are fully engaged in the programme. This is an increase of 16%. Some 2,000 schools have gained a school games kitemark (approximately 183 of these achieved the highest “gold” reward—an increase from 69 schools the previous year). Over 100 county festivals of sport took place during the summer and winter, involving more than 100,000 young participants.
The hugely successful school games national finals took place in Sheffield in September; 1,439 of some of the UK’s best young elite athletes, 15% of whom were athletes with disabilities, took part in 12 different sports. Some 535 volunteers, including 411 young people, supported the competitors and spectators. Once again a delegation of young athletes from Brazil took part in three sports winning 15 medals. In return, the UK will send a team of some of our best young disabled athletes to compete at Brazil’s school Paralympic-style games in November, providing them with valuable experience in competing against high-class international competition at a major sporting event.
PE/School Sport
Some £150 million per year of ring-fenced funding has now gone directly to primary school head teachers to spend solely on PE and sporting provision.
Sport England has provided additional funding to County Sport Partnerships to provide support and advice to schools on accessing the best sporting opportunities for their pupils.
A new cadre of 120 primary school teachers with a particular specialism in teaching PE is being trained through a pilot scheme delivered by the Teaching Agency. Sport England has lowered the ages of their Sportivate and Satellite Club programs from 14+ to 11+ giving all secondary school children more opportunities to participate in community sport.
Ofsted inspectors will report on how well the school uses its funding.
Disability Sport Legacy
On 7 September, Sport England announced a further £8 million of national lottery funding to give disabled people across the country more opportunities to get into sport: £7 million through a second round of the inclusive sport fund and £1 million in “Get Equipped” a new disability fund. Sport England also invested £190,000 into the Special Olympics national summer games in September which saw 1,700 athletes from England, Scotland and Wales competing in 12 disciplines over three days.
International Development
An independent evaluation of the international inspiration programme has confirmed that more than 15 million children have benefited from the programme in 20 partner countries. The programme has helped to promote sustainable change in these countries’ sports systems.
I will continue to provide quarterly updates to the House on progress with delivery of this plan.