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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help support grassroots sport.

Sports and physical activity are incredibly important for our physical and mental health and all generations and communities should be able to enjoy the health, wellbeing, social and other benefits of being active.

Since the government launched its sports strategy, Sporting Future in 2015, we have achieved a huge amount. Sport England has allocated over £1.5 billion to nearly 5,000 grassroots organisations across the UK. Sport England has also published its new ten year strategy which focuses on driving up activity levels and helping to improve physical and mental health.

In 2020 alone, Sport England distributed over £340 million of Exchequer and Lottery funding to support the development of grassroots sport in England, in addition to £100 million through the National Leisure Recovery Fund.

The Prime Minister has committed to delivering the grassroots pitches every community needs and this has already resulted in an investment of £25 million by the government to upgrade and improve facilities across the UK this year. At the Spending Review, a further £205 million was pledged over the next three years, targeted at the communities most in need, with the aim of increasing participation in sport among under-represented groups, as part of the government’s levelling up plans. This was in addition to a £30 million package to renovate 4,500 park tennis courts across the country.