Coalfield Areas: Sports Facilities

Nick Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Tracey Crouch)]

I would be delighted, Mr Owen. Unlike the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), I do not think that this is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship. I am sure that it will be as much of a pleasure as last time.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for securing the debate. I welcome the opportunity to raise awareness of this important issue and to explore with hon. Members what can be done. I am grateful to him, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) and the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) for meeting me earlier this year. It was a helpful introduction to their concerns about the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation and to the aspiration of hon. Members to seek greater investment in their communities. I would also be very happy to meet the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron) to discuss Maltby, if that would help. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) about devolution is interesting, albeit challenging, given the way that funds are distributed for sports across the UK. I will take that away and think about it.

This is clearly an important subject. Like all hon. Members who have spoken, I firmly believe that sport and physical activity should be for everyone, no matter where they come from or where they live. Sport has the power to transform lives and the benefits go far beyond the physical, which is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve through the sport and physical activity strategy. Sporting Future was one of the first strategies that I delivered as the Sports Minister in 2015. At its core is a desire to create a healthier, happier and more productive nation. Supporting people to be more active in whatever way best suits them is a crucial part of that.

One of the greatest factors that affects people’s desire and ability to get involved is the environment and facilities that they can access. Facilities are key. For some people, especially for older generations, taking part in sport can bring back memories of crumbling changing rooms, muddy pitches and jumpers for goalposts, so good-quality, inclusive and welcoming environments are important in encouraging people to get active and, more importantly, stay active.

I am pleased that the Government are doing so much to transform sporting facilities across the country. I recognise that Sporting Future is not perfect, but we are insistent that facilities and the environment for sport and physical activity should be a priority. It made clear our support for bringing together sport and physical activity facilities with other community services. It also highlighted the benefits of multi-sport facilities in improving usage and sustainability. More than that, it placed the customer—the person—at the heart of facility design. Gone are the simple days of “build it and they will come”. We must be smarter and we must think harder.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Given the local government cuts in leisure, given that the industry does not support sport as it used to, certainly in my area, and given the real problems of modern illnesses such as child and adult obesity across the UK, particularly in our coalfield communities, what more does the Minister think the NHS can do to make a large-scale material difference in improving the health of our country by promoting physical activity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) suggested? The Minister’s strategy is worthy, but will it make a sufficient difference to deal with modern killers? Do we need to be much more ambitious and involve the NHS?

[Tracey Crouch]

We already involve the NHS, but we can do more. That is not within my portfolio, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that a lot is going on in terms of the social prescribing of physical activity in local communities to combat the issues that he mentioned. Other things can be done—he should remind me to tell him about some girl guides from Wales who just visited me, who have been working hard to get sports such as rugby into their schools, despite opposition from their headteachers to allowing girls to do traditionally boys’ sports. I will talk to him about that outside the Chamber, because it is not the issue that we are talking about today. There is no simple solution, though; we need a partnership across many different agencies.

To support the Government’s ambitions, Sport England is investing £40 million in large-scale facilities up to 2021 through its strategic facilities fund. Its community asset fund provides grants of up to £150,000 to organisations and communities that want to take more ownership over the spaces and facilities in their local areas. I am pleased to see the extensive support that Sport England has already provided to mining communities, with £4.8 million of public investment having been awarded to 30 miners’ welfare organisations since 2005.

I was very interested in the comments by the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, because it says here in my script that the Kiveton community sports park in South Yorkshire is a particularly successful and recent example of how Sport England funding has helped to regenerate land and support mining communities to be more active. The park is used for sports as diverse as football, cricket, tag rugby and bowls; there are also para-sports such as boccia and goalball. Clearly, we need to talk about Kiveton outside this Chamber. It also says here in my script that it is a wonderful facility, and I am thrilled that so many people are being introduced to such a wide array of sports. Clearly, our perception of what is being delivered at Kiveton is very different from the reality on the ground, and I welcome his feedback on that.

It also says here in my script that Kiveton is a great example of how local interest and drive can be harnessed to make a real difference for communities. Regardless of Kiveton, however, it is clear that facilities only work properly when they are properly planned, properly used and properly maintained. That means being clear about which people we think would benefit the most from using them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield and others spoke about CISWO. Although colleagues will appreciate that I am not in a position to comment on specific details of CISWO’s operations, I encourage all interested parties, including CISWO, the local trusts, local county sports partnerships and others to come together to discuss how local communities and facilities can best be supported and managed. Sport England has huge expertise in this area and I am sure that its staff would be very happy to contribute to such conversations. If that is of interest to colleagues, we can help to facilitate it.

We all know that many of the mining communities that we have talked about today include people from some of the hardest-to-reach groups in society, who are exactly the people who benefit the most from becoming more active. That is another key message in the sport and physical activity strategy. We want a strong focus from the whole sport and physical activity sector on how we can reach people who traditionally have not got involved in sport or who think sport or physical activity is not for them.

A great deal of support is already out there. Sport England has delivered a range of opportunities that place tackling inactivity and engaging under-represented groups at their core, and it is investing up to £100 million in 12 local delivery pilots across the country. These pilots focus on bringing together a wide range of partners to solve inactivity challenges in very specific locations. We are monitoring those pilots very closely, as they will be vital in helping to deliver better interventions across the country in the future.

Public funding and support can only stretch so far, but I shall make sure that the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield is passed on to the Chancellor as soon as possible. However, as I said earlier, there is no simple answer and therefore no one solution. Organisations that have great ideas about developing their facilities need to be encouraged and directed to other sources of finance and support. They need to be brought together—even cajoled—and it is in this regard that local leadership and understanding is key. Local authorities are the organisations best placed to understand what is needed in their communities and how to build support for any proposal, and the brokerage that local leaders can offer is invaluable. I urge the parties involved to get around the table to find a solution. Whether it is the challenges of planning regulations, access to finance or a lack of co-ordination, there is an opportunity to address real community need.

What we must avoid at all costs is building facilities that do not have the support of local organisations and that have not been tested by the community. I know that as someone whose constituency received funding for a major sports facility in the early stages of Sport England and lottery funding. That facility was developed, but a few years later it went into administration, because it had not been subject to community testing and did not have the right business plan. I really encourage thinking through the bids that go into the lottery organisations.