Cultural Centres and Sporting Facilities: North West Durham

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) for securing the debate. Sport and physical activity are more important than ever as we continue to fight against covid-19. I appreciate the passion with which he advocates for the provision of sport and leisure facilities in his constituency and, indeed, the broader issues that he raises about cultural investment in his constituency.

My hon. Friend’s constituents are lucky to have him championing their cause. We have spoken many times about the issues and, indeed, the opportunities within the remit of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in his constituency—from sport, to heritage, culture, tourism and, indeed, gambling. I would be delighted to take him up on his offer to visit his part of the world in the near future and see at first hand some of the entities, institutions and people he proudly mentioned.

As hon. Members will be aware, on 4 January the Prime Minister announced the third national lockdown and asked people to stay at home to control the virus, protect the NHS and save lives. As a result, indoor and outdoor sports facilities, including swimming pools and leisure centres, have unfortunately had to close. Sport and physical activity are crucial to our mental and physical health. They are a powerful defence against the covid-19 pandemic, and we will need to raise levels of fitness among the population as we prepare to return to our normal lives, now that the vaccination programme has begun. Our local authority leisure and sports facilities will play a key role in enhancing our national health.

My hon. Friend focused particularly on the provision of swimming facilities. Of course, swimming is a wonderful way to exercise and a popular choice for many people to be active, including of course in County Durham. In Parliament, we are fortunate to have a very active all-party parliamentary group on swimming, which I have had the pleasure to meet on several occasions since the pandemic began. Swimming has a wide variety of benefits, including reducing stress and anxiety, improving health and wellbeing, building endurance and muscle strength, and improving cardiovascular fitness.

Furthermore, we all know that learning to swim saves lives, which differentiates it from many other sports, important as they are. Saving lives is a really important part of why swimming is so important. That is why swimming pools were one of the first sports facilities to be reopened following the initial lockdown, and were able to stay open in local tiers 1 to 3. The report “The Importance of Pools Post-lockdown”, published by Swim England back in May last year, highlighted how a 25-metre pool on its own can generate about £7 million of social value in the community and save the NHS and social care systems more than £1.2 million.

It is therefore no surprise that my hon. Friend is advocating for a swimming pool in his constituency. Before the lockdown, around 14 million adults in England went swimming each year, with more than 1 million children learning to swim outside of school through Swim England’s “Learn to Swim” programme, so it is a pleasure to hear him champion swimming in his constituency and, I understand, express disappointment in the current levels of provision there.

Support for sports facilities in north-west Durham has been taken up with Sport England directly. It is the arm’s length body with responsibility for activity levels and sport for DCMS, and I know that it would welcome further discussions with the council and my hon. Friend to develop a more robust assessment of the area’s strategic leisure needs. This will not be a standing start: since 2016, Sport England has invested over £425,000 of lottery and Exchequer funding in the North West Durham constituency, and since 1995, over £4 million. This includes £313,000 to Consett YMCA and over £80,000 to the Crook community leisure centre to support multi-sports facilities and to increase participation.

On the arts and culture side, which my hon. Friend also mentioned, through the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund there have been several awards to date in North West Durham—he mentioned some of them—totalling over £1 million in funding and including such entities as the Durham and Darlington music education hub, the Association for Cultural Enterprises, and the St Cuthbert’s Society. That funding goes directly, as he requested, rather than via the local authorities.

More broadly, to support the return of grassroots sports, including swimming pools, once restrictions can be reduced, the Government have provided unprecedented support for businesses through tax reliefs, cash grants, employee wage support and a whole variety of other measures. We developed a £100 million support fund for local authority leisure centres. This national leisure recovery fund seeks to support eligible public sector leisure centres to reopen to the public, giving the sport and physical activity sector the best chance of recovery to a position of sustainable operations over the medium term. A total of £100 million is available as a biddable fund to eligible local authorities in England, and it will be allocated in a single funding round. My officials are currently in the process of assessing bids for the fund, and funding decisions will be communicated shortly.

This is all on top of the funding that Sport England has provided, which has comprised over £220 million to directly support the sport and physical activity sector, with £35 million set aside as a community emergency fund for our very important sports clubs and exercise centres. On 26 January, Sport England published its 10-year strategy, “Uniting the Movement”, and it also committed an extra £50 million to help grassroots sports clubs and organisations affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Government, both with direct grants and through their ALBs, are doing what they can to help local councils and institutions to sustain their sporting and cultural offerings. My hon. Friend makes a compelling case for his constituents to get their fair share—or fair cut of the cake, as he described it—of any local and central Government investment. I hope that his local council is listening to his pleas, because he seems to be expressing some frustrations with its resource allocation decisions of late—frustrations that some of his constituents apparently share.

In terms of sport provision, as Sports Minister, I hope that councils always endeavour to provide access to facilities for as many people in their area as possible. One of the key drivers of increasing activity levels is of course easy access to sport and leisure facilities, and we rely on councils for that. Indeed, I praise councils for prioritising leisure facility provision, but it is not just a matter of how much they spend on sport and leisure, but where they spend it. This is a debate to be had locally rather than for me to dictate here in the Chamber today. I hope that my hon. Friend can and will have constructive discussions with his local council. No doubt this will be a political issue in the upcoming local elections, where I am confident that the local Conservative team will have a particularly compelling manifesto for his constituents to consider.

The past year has been like no other, but I really appreciate the collaboration we have had with all DCMS stakeholders at national and local level. I am determined that the sports and cultural sectors emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever, and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and others in achieving just that.

Question put and agreed to.