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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department has taken to (a) evaluate the effect of covid-19 restrictions on grassroots boxing and (b) support England Boxing with guidance for enabling boxing training to resume as covid-19 restrictions are eased.

Sports and physical activity are crucial for our mental and physical health. That’s why we have continued to make sure that people can exercise throughout the national restrictions and why we have ensured that grassroots and children’s sport is front of the queue when easing those restrictions.

On Monday 22 February, the Prime Minister announced a roadmap out of the current lockdown in England. The government has introduced a step approach to the return of outdoor and indoor sport areas across England. Each full step of the roadmap will be informed by the latest available science and data and will be five weeks apart in order to provide time to assess the data and provide one week’s notice to businesses and individuals.

National Governing Bodies, including England Boxing, for contact sports have developed action plans in line with the governments Combat Sport Framework which takes into account the level of risk of their sport and how they can work to mitigate it to minimise COVID-19 transmission risk. This has been reviewed by government to ensure it is consistent with the overarching government guidance.

At step 2 of the Roadmap, contact combat sports can resume at phase 2 of the Contact Combat Sports framework for children and at phase 1 for adults. Outdoors, these sports are exempt from social gathering limits as they are organised sport. Indoors, adults must only only take part in individual activity and children can take part in groups of up to 15.