Tennis

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Meg Munn]

It is good to hear about that, because we must address the barriers to more people playing tennis.

I am sceptical that the LTA can achieve the surge in participation that we are all talking about and all want. In my experience, lasting involvement is often achieved by local people coming together and deciding to do something, by people getting involved for not just two weeks, during Wimbledon or when something is first there, and doing something that continues and enables people to take up a sport, which, as I said earlier, they can keep on playing well into their 60s, 70s and even 80s. For instance, a group of parents might want to do something for their children, or a group of women might want to get together and get active, while having fun. What prevents people from seeing tennis as the way to do that is the lack of courts and equipment, and probably most difficult to overcome is the sense that tennis is a sport for better-off people, with too many children and adults seeing it as elitist and not for them.

An organisation that has set out to change things is Tennis for Free, which starts from a simple point of view. If children want to play football, they get their ball, find a patch of grass, put down a couple of jumpers and start playing. It costs them nothing. Charging to use tennis courts has helped the decline in participation, by making tennis too expensive for many people to play, and councils need someone collect the money. The result across the country has been poor-quality tennis courts that become underused and fall into disrepair.

Tennis for Free works with schools, tennis clubs and local authorities. It uses public park court facilities to create tennis communities. It provides free equipment and a free two-year coaching programme, run by qualified coaches and available to young people and adults of all ages, standards and abilities.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I declare an interest as vice-chairman of the all-party group on tennis. I am, however, a very poor player, unlike the hon. Lady, whose skills are renowned throughout the Palace of Westminster.

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

And Wimbledon.

[Mark Pritchard]

Indeed. I should like to put on record my thanks to Mr Speaker for his active support of tennis and of Tennis for Free in particular. Given the huge amount of money going into tennis generally, from the Exchequer and the lottery, does the hon. Lady accept that a future Wimbledon champion—junior or senior, male or female—is as likely to come from the Tennis for Free courts as from private courts or those where an entry fee is charged?

[Meg Munn]

As the hon. Gentleman is probably aware, my view is that talent is certainly likely to be spread equally across the whole population. However, it is not just about getting the person who is going to do well and represent the country, but about getting everyone else involved, too.

With Tennis for Free, we are seeing a way of opening tennis to even more people, by providing free equipment and a free two-year coaching programme and, at the end of the two years, a friends community group is created to provide a free coaching programme with the same inclusive and welcoming ethos. Such community-based techniques have been shown to work. Tennis for Free’s approach offers value for money and is, importantly, sustainable. It has had more than 16,000 attendees at its coaching events over the past year and is now embarking on a programme of renewing and renovating courts. It has also targeted low-income groups, thus ensuring that the schemes are promoted to families in areas of high deprivation, to spread greater provision to where there have traditionally been no tennis courts. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) described the importance of that.

A vital part of Tennis for Free’s activity is persuading local councils to make access to tennis courts free of charge. That improves value for money, because the maintenance budget is helped by the fact that well-used courts are less likely to become overgrown and vandalised. There are now more than 2,600 free park courts in the UK, up from just 700 in 2005—a real achievement for a small organisation. The approach matches public need. The ComRes survey found that a third of people would be more likely to play tennis if courts were open for longer, were in better condition and offered free coaching. The great thing about the approach is that it is relatively cheap to set up; provided that it is done in partnership, a two-year coaching programme costs about £15,000. Tennis for Free’s success shows us that there is potential in grass-roots activity.

Investment in tennis is crucial. The coalition Government have announced a new youth sport strategy, to invest £1 billion of lottery and Exchequer funding in partnership with Sport England to ensure that more young people regularly play sport and will continue to do so into adult life. The funding is dependent on a performance management regime, whereby national governing bodies must demonstrate local impact to avoid the funds being withdrawn. So far, public funding for tennis has not produced the growth in participation that could have been achieved, but this is our opportunity to get it right, and the 2013-2017 plans for each national governing body are being developed over the next few months.

A vision for developing grass-roots tennis has been set out in the charter for tennis. It includes enabling wider participation, so resources spent on tennis must be focused on grass-roots development. Sport England funding from 2013 should be channelled to organisations dedicated to grass-roots development and allocated on the principles of transparency, accountability and value for money. By concentrating on grass-roots tennis and getting more people playing, we increase the number of people who find it an enjoyable and worthwhile activity in its own right. Will the Minister therefore consider guaranteeing that a proportion of tennis’s future funding goes directly to grass-roots organisations such as Tennis for Free, rather than being channelled through only the national governing body?