Football: Defibrillators

(asked on 19th April 2022) - View Source

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 increase funding for grassroots football clubs to purchase defibrillators.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 28th April 2022

Events at UEFA EURO 2020 last year have demonstrated the immense value of access to Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) and first aid training for anyone involved in sport.

At the grassroots sport level, all capital funding awards for sports venues made by Sport England, the government’s arm’s length body for community sport, must include AED provision if it is not already available.

For football facilities, The Football Association (The FA) and the British Heart Foundation have provided support over recent years to help ensure AEDs are available. I welcome the Premier League’s Defibrillator Fund, which will fund AEDs at thousands of football clubs and facilities across the country. Each grant recipient will be required to have at least one person successfully complete The FA Education Sudden Cardiac Arrest free online course. Sport England is working with the Football Foundation in support of the Premier League initiative to put £3 million into providing AED equipment for grassroots football clubs.

The Defibrillator Fund will see AEDs provided to Football Foundation funded facilities which currently are without a device onsite. The second phase of the project now allows grassroots clubs that own their facilities to apply for funding for a defibrillator, with 1,538 applications to the fund received to date.

Reticulating Splines