National League: Coronavirus

(asked on 29th January 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent support he has made available to National League football clubs in (a) Slough and (b) England to ensure they can continue playing for the rest of the season.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 3rd February 2021

On 19 November 2020, the government announced a £300 million Sports Winter Survival Package (SWSP) to provide a lifeline to organisations that would otherwise not survive the winter as a result of the restriction on spectators announced from 1 October. A provisional allocation of £25 million was made to support the National League, covering steps one to six, aiming to protect the immediate future of non-league football in England. A further announcement on 27 January 2021 confirmed that Steps 3-6 of the National League system will receive up to £10 million of grant support from the Package to protect the immediate future of approximately 850 clubs over the winter period. Sport England and the Independent Board are currently finalising the details of this support, which will include any support for National League clubs in Slough, should they be eligible.

The SWSP support is in addition to the £10 million emergency package we facilitated for the National League from the National Lottery, in October last year, has benefitted the 66 clubs in the steps 1 and 2, and has enabled them to continue playing behind closed doors after the return of fans was paused last autumn.

The support packages that have been available to the National League are in addition to the multi-billion pound package of cross-sector business support from the Government that has enabled many sports clubs and leisure businesses to survive, including the furlough scheme and business interruption loan scheme. Sports have accessed many hundreds of millions of pounds of support through this.

The Government remains committed to engaging across the sector to maintain a complete picture of the financial impact of Covid-19 to ensure sports venues survive this difficult period wherever possible.

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