Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to improve transparency in the allocation of grassroots sport funding.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery Funding.

Sport England allocates funds to National Governing Bodies and grassroots sports providers primarily based on their ability to deliver against the aims set out in their ‘Uniting the Movement’ strategy around getting more people active, reducing the number of inactive people and tackling long-standing inequalities. Sport England’s website provides transparency data about how their funding is invested.

As part of this, Sport England are committed to reducing inactivity within lower socio-economic groups. Through their place partnership work, they have invested into more than 90 places across England, focusing resources and efforts on communities that need the greatest levels of support and experience the greatest levels of inequality. Each place is in the top 20% of the country for inactivity, social need, deprivation and health inequality at a national level.