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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she made of the value gained for the public of Government funds given to the Football Association in each of the last five years.

Football continues to be the nation’s most popular team sport, with over 1.5m more weekly participants than any other team sport. Public funding has gone into programmes delivered by the FA that sustain that interest and also that encourage more people from all ages and backgrounds to take part in the sport.

Sport England has challenged the FA to deliver results for the public money it receives. In 2014, £1.6million was taken away after the FA failed to reverse a decline in the number of people regularly playing the sport.

Since then, outdoor 5-a-side football has seen an increase in participation from 744,200 people per week in 2010 (APS4) to 795,700 in 2016 (APS10 Q2) showing changing customer demands which the FA must continue to respond to.