Sporting Legacy

Helen Grant Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Written Statements

[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 second anniversary report detailed the activities which took place in the second year since the 2012 games.

As the 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 on the Government’s sport legacy plan since July.

The UK has shown that it remains one of the best places in the world to stage major sporting events with incredible and inspiring events such as the Invictus games. Each major sporting event hosted in this country helps to build on the legacy of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games and inspires new people to get involved with sport.

In February of this year the Government and Mayor of London launched our “Moving More, Living More” initiative to promote physical activity as part of the legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. As part of that initiative we see today:

the launch of Public Health England’s physical activity implementation framework, “Everybody Active, Every Day”, which will provide local authorities and other organisations with guidance, evidence and supportive materials to help them when commissioning local physical activity interventions. The framework has been developed following extensive consultation with members of the public and stakeholders.

the announcement by Sport England of a new £5 million fund, “Get Healthy, Get Active”, which will allow local communities to apply for funding to help to tackle inactivity and which will be aligned to local strategies.

There will also be a number of other Government announcements relating to physical activity over the coming months, including the launch of a cycling and walking delivery plan, being led by the Department for Transport.

For the last year, the DCMS Women and Sport Advisory Board has been meeting to discuss further ways to address the issues surrounding women and sport, from participation to commercial sponsorship and women on sports boards. I am convening the Government’s first conference dedicated specifically to the issues surrounding women and sport on the 30 October. This invites public engagement to further this important agenda and demonstrates the Government’s commitment to women in sport.

The “I Will If You Will” 12-month pilot programme—launched in Bury in September 2013—tested what helps to encourage more women and girls to be more active, more often. With £2.3 million of national lottery funding from Sport England, and delivered by Bury council, the innovative programme has the support of the local sports providers, community groups, businesses and volunteer champions. It has helped engage more than 6,500 women and girls across the borough, delivered nearly 25,000 activity sessions and allocated approximately £35,000 of grant money for local groups. The second phase of the programme will start in early 2015 and run for two years. Exact plans and the learnings from the pilot will be revealed later in the year.

Elite sport

At the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth games, England finished top of the medal table and Scotland’s fourth place was its highest ever finish. In fact, England, Scotland and Wales won more medals than ever before at a Commonwealth games.

The England women’s rugby team won the 2014 rugby world cup in Paris on 17 August. I can report that at a grass-roots level, nearly 14,000 women and girls are currently registered as playing rugby each week and the Rugby Football Union is targeting growth of a further 10,000 participants by 2017.

UK Sport has doubled investment in British Winter Olympic and Paralympic sports preparing for the next games in PyeongChang, South Korea, in 2018. Following the games in Sochi, winter sports were able to make a compelling case to UK Sport for increased investment in the next cycle. UK Sport will invest up to £31 million in eight winter Olympic and Paralympic sports, which have demonstrated credible medal potential for PyeongChang 2018 or in 2022. This will contribute towards a collective ambition for Great Britain to have yet another record-breaking winter games in four years’ time. This is more than double the investment in the Sochi cycle—the four years leading up to the Sochi games—of just over £14 million.

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 April 2014, revealed that athletes had given more than 8,200 days to community and school sport since London 2012.

World-class facilities

The south of Queen Elizabeth Olympic park reopened in April 2014. Since the north of the park began to open in July 2013, more than 3 million people have visited for a wide variety of community, cultural and sporting events or simply to enjoy the new parkland.

The park’s world-class sporting venues continue to draw huge crowds. The London Aquatics Centre attracted more than 500,000 visitors since it opened in March 2014, the Copper Box arena drew in 300,000 visitors in its first year while Lee Valley VeloPark has had more than 300,000 visitors since it opened in March 2014. The Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre also opened its doors to the public in June 2014.

The park also plays host to a range of major sporting events. On 8 June 2014 thousands of people came to the park to enjoy the Queen’s baton relay on its journey to Glasgow for the Commonwealth games. A festival of sport, part of the park’s three-year Active People, Active Park programme, was staged as part of the relay to encourage local people of all ages and abilities to get active with more than 30 different sports on offer. The park formed part of the route for this year’s Tour de France while the Prudential Ride London event attracted more than 20,000 amateur and professional cyclists who began their Prudential Ride London event from the heart of the park in early August. Later in the month 30,000 people attended a wide variety of sporting activities to mark National Paralympic day and in September, 65,000 spectators watched 400 injured, sick or wounded servicemen and women from 13 countries compete in the inaugural Invictus games.

Major sports events

DCMS, with UK Sport and Sport England, are planning to capitalise on the UK hosting major events to increase sport participation. Later this year DCMS and UK Sport will publish an updated major events strategy which will demonstrate a collaborative partnership which aims to identify, attract and deliver up to 100 major international sporting events by 2023, including World and European championships such as the world artistic gymnastics (2015), world athletics championships (2017) and UEFA European championship finals package (2020).

UK Sport’s £41 million gold event series funded through the national lottery will support the bidding and delivery of a majority of these events. In 2013, Sport England launched a £2 million engagement fund to support the gold event series by enabling participation programmes to be wrapped around major events hosted in England.

Interest in volunteering for major events remains high. UK Sport is encouraging an emphasis on good training and orientation to create a successful event and to create a positive volunteering experience. A report on the rugby league world cup 2013 confirmed that over 700 volunteers were part of the event, and 300 of these were new to volunteering. Outcomes of the report were good and demonstrated a positive experience for volunteers. The Yorkshire Tour de France Grand Depart 2014 utilised over 10,000 volunteers selected to become “Tour Makers”. Interest in volunteering for the rugby world cup was high. England 2015 received over 20,000 applications for 6,000 volunteer roles across the UK. Seventy-five per cent of applications for “The Pack” were from the rugby community in line with the tournament vision. Selection events, or “Try Outs”, began in June and will be held in every host city until December 2014.

Community

Places people play

Sport England’s investment in grass-roots sports facilities now stands at £91 million, with over 1,670 clubs already having benefited from the “Inspired Facilities” programme.

Youth sport strategy

Sportivate and satellite clubs are two of Sport England’s leading community sport programmes that have already got more than half a million young people playing sport every week. Sportivate introduces 11-25 year olds to sport through a six-week coaching course. Satellite clubs bring community sports clubs into schools and colleges and help young people continue their sporting habit after they leave school.

A total of 495,132 14 to 25-year-olds have completed the Sportivate coaching course, with over 300,000 continuing to participate. There are now 3,615 satellite clubs operational and 480 of these are girls only. This is an increase of 1,615 satellite clubs since July 2014, of these 280 girls-only clubs started during this period. These continue to bring sport to young people in very local venues and may attract young people who are not typically very sporty.

In September, Sport England’s university sport activation fund awarded £11.3 million of national lottery funding to support the universities to get nearly 195,000 new students playing sport by offering them the chance to take up new sport or to continue playing a sport they used to play at school or college.

Volunteering

Summer 2014 saw Join In co-ordinate a relay of volunteering across the UK, sending sports stars back to where their careers began to highlight the importance of volunteers to the success of local sport. Over 1,000 people attended the 10 stops across the country, supported by 100-plus volunteers.

Alongside this was Join In’s volunteer co-ordination at Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth games and Invictus games. This, combined with the recent Join In partnership with ITV’s local heroes campaign, has encouraged volunteering and club engagement through the Join In website.

Join In’s “Value of Volunteering in Sport” research was launched on 16 October at Admiralty House.

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 4-7 September. A total of 1,600 athletes competed in 12 sports in venues across the city. With more than 10,000 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.

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. The first 100 projects began this summer with a large number of schools and children already enjoying their newly enhanced outdoor facility.

OFSTED published a primary school sport premium survey report on 15 October looking at the first year of delivery of primary PE and sport fund. The results were positive showing lots of good practice at schools across the country.

Disability sport legacy

Following the success of the London 2012 Paralympic games, we want to inspire more people with disabilities to play sport regularly and the Invictus games were certainly inspirational. There is good evidence to show a positive relationship between attending/watching major events encourages participation, and this same inspirational impact is also felt by TV viewers. The Invictus games continues the success of the Paralympics in bringing disability sport to a mass audience—and the real benefits to the public’s perception of disabled people.

International development

The international inspiration (II) programme ended in June 2014. Active in 20 countries, II exceeded its vision of reaching 12 million young people with more than 15.6 million reached. A final evaluation report of II was published in July 2014 by Ecrorys and examined the programme’s impact with the II. The charity is working on plans to sustain the programme beyond its completion.

I will continue to provide quarterly updates to the House on progress with delivery of this plan.