Community Sports Facilities

Debate between Jeffrey M Donaldson and Charlotte Leslie

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[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?