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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to Government grants statistics 2020 to 2021, published on 31 March 2022, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the ALB-Sport England-Facilities Fund.

The department agrees objectives and KPIs for Sport England’s grant funding and their board allocates funding in accordance with those objectives. The department and its public bodies deliver all grant funding in line with the Government Functional Standard GovS 015: Grants.

The ‘Facilities Fund’ has been used to categorise several Sport England funding streams and investment categories that Sport England have delivered on. As a result, we have identified investment and funding streams within this category that best reflect the impact of said category: namely, the National Leisure Recovery Fund.

Between January and March 2021, the NLRF was successfully administered by Sport England alongside DCMS and MHCLG (as was) providing much needed support to 266 Local Authorities with facilities able to re-open from 12 April 2021 and all Covid-19 restrictions lifted from 19 July 2021.