Welcome to this meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, at which we are continuing to take evidence for our inquiry into community and school sports. We are focusing today on how we can improve the provision of sports and activity facilities for all. As we come to the end of the inquiry, the key thing will be looking at the recommendations that we can put to the Government in our report. To help us in that quest, we are joined this morning by Councillor Peter Mason, who represents the Local Government Association; by Robert Sullivan, the CEO of the Football Foundation; and by Huw Edwards, the CEO of ukactive. You are all very welcome. Before we start, I remind Members to declare any interests. I will kick off. Peter, in your written evidence you referred to the benefits that a multi-year funding grant offers. What does that mean? What more could you do if there were certainty?

First, the funding situation for sport and leisure facilities within the sphere of the public and local authorities is that we have received, certainly since 2010, a considerable loss in real terms in the overall financial envelope in which local authorities have had to operate. That is coupled with the rise in demand for statutory services, for example adult social care and children with special educational needs. Temporary accommodation is the latest of those. In that context, for discretionary services such as leisure and sports facilities, local authorities have come under incredible pressure. In the last 15 years, we have seen a real-terms cut in those services of about £2.3 billion. The year-on-year nature of local government funding means that councils have to make difficult decisions each year about how they retain their discretionary spending to make room for the statutory responsibilities and functions for which we are legally mandated. That is not to underestimate the importance of sports and leisure facilities, which are still funded by local government to the tune of £1.4 billion per annum. We are the largest funder of sporting activities in the UK in the public context. A three-year funding settlement allows local authorities to appropriately plan for the services that we know that we will have to deliver despite the pressures against us, and also to ensure that we can deliver not just the statutory functions, but very important discretionary services. It gives us the confidence and the freedom to operate in a much more coherent way. We are looking forward not just to the comprehensive spending review, but to the three-year financial settlement that the Government have promised local government.

Do you think that there is some sort of tipping point whereby having five years of certainty over how much money you are going to get, even if it is not an increase, is better than having a small increase in money but no security for the future and not knowing what will happen year after year? Where is the tipping point there?

As you can imagine, we would certainly advocate for increasing overall funds. We estimate that we would need about £875 million over the next few years to be able to bring the two thirds of public facilities that are currently not fit for purpose up to modern standards. However, long-term stability and certainty over local government finance is required. In the last 15 years, local councils have had to take some very difficult decisions about a diminishing pot of funding, but they have done so piecemeal without necessarily knowing what the future might hold for them. Certainty is key. Like any business, local government wants to plan and needs the ability to do so.

What about more outside investment? Are there any obstacles to attracting investment from a range of sources? What could the Government do to encourage that sort of investment?

In the last decade or more, local authorities have had to valorise their assets. We have seen an increase in local authorities entering into partnerships with private sector providers to be able to continue to operate leisure facilities that perhaps might be still in the freehold of local authorities but nevertheless need to be able to wash their own face to survive in the modern context. Local authorities up and down the country continue to be in those commercial arrangements. We invariably need to recognise, though, that a substantial amount of local authority provision—leisure centres, sports facilities—is often in places that are underserved by the commercial market, quite possibly because of the commercial nature of many of our operators in the UK. You need critical mass in locations to be able to make those facilities work. The public sector will always try to make sure that we are targeting underserved communities and communities that might perhaps not have the fundamental economic capacity to be able to support those facilities. For example, they may be in a rural or a semi-rural location, or perhaps an area of the country that is lower on the indices of multiple deprivation. However, those facilities are just as important as those that the private sector might only be able to provide in areas where there might be higher footfall or opportunities that are more commercially advantageous.

I will put the same question to you, Robert Sullivan and Huw Edwards: what do you think the Government could do? Could the Government do anything to create a better environment for attracting outside investment to the sector? Robert, what do you think?

Thank you, Chair, for the question and for the invitation to give evidence today. It is a key question. A couple of themes have already been mentioned. The first is the certainty of long-term funding. I know that that is difficult in the current political environment, but the longer the certainty, the better, because that allows for strategic planning as to where investment should go. We are trying to build a pipeline of projects to invest in. If we know that we will have a certain amount of funding going forward, we can build that pipeline with confidence. The second thing we would be looking for is some creativity and flexibility in how we bring private investment into this space. We are very proud of the model of the Football Foundation, because we are bringing in private investment from football. We are commingling money from the FA and the Premier League with Government money, and the certainty of the Government money allows us to attract money from football. Potentially, we can now take that funding and go into the third space of other types of investors as well. If we could have conversations with all our funding partners, but the Government in particular, around the length and the certainty of their funding, and potentially the guarantees with which they could support us in different types of borrowing arrangements or flexible debt arrangements, we could build a much greater pot of investment to do the community sports facilities projects that make communities active and proud of where they live. That is what we would be looking for from the Government. We have some ideas about specific support around debt borrowing and guarantees that could come with that. There is a kind of flex between the quantum of the funding from the Government and the length of the certainty and the guarantees that might be offered as a kind of quid pro quo for the quantum that could allow us to go to the debt markets or private pension fund providers and say to them, “Come with us on this journey to transform community sports facilities.” We know that football facilities drive physical activity, create community cohesion and can attract under-represented groups. A huge amount of social impact could be driven by that investment alongside the economic value of those facilities washing their own face because people will turn up and pay to play football on those sites. If we can broaden that model of football’s money from the FA and the Premier League being generous, the Government providing financial support—long-term guarantees and securitisation support—we could bring in other parts of investment and really finish what is a very important job for this country.

Huw, what would you add on creativity and flexibility?

There are probably three things. First, the Government could have greater advocacy and a strategic vision for what they want to achieve from sport and physical activity in this country. What is the end destination? What do the Government want to achieve from the role the sector plays in improving the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the nation, driving economic growth and taking pressure off the NHS? They should make that destination as explicit as it can be, but complement it by creating an environment that encourages business investment. My members, both public and private, are struggling in areas ranging from the reduction in the business rates exemption to the increase in national insurance contributions. These things are putting pressure on facilities to address operating costs. So the first thing is about an environment that can support investment. Secondly, working across the sector as a whole, it is about a strategic plan for facilities, public and private. What do you have in areas right now? What is succeeding? Where are the challenges around not just the growth of facilities, but the renewal of facilities with an ageing stock, especially in the public sector? Where is your strategic plan for delivering renewal? Thirdly, how can you access and deliver renewal and growth in facilities? That challenge looks at planning regulations and the revitalisation of high streets, where especially my private operators are thriving. Access to a high street gym starts at £4 a week in this country, which is half a pint in the Red Lion, so it is highly competitive on price. Then we can look at the integration with wider projects such as housing and the co-location of facilities. How are you co-locating gyms and leisure facilities with GP services, banks and wider community services so you get a real bang for your buck? Lastly, as Peter and Robert said, there are alternative streams of investment. Renewal of facilities in particular is not going to come from the Exchequer alone in the next three or four years, so alternative streams of investment are important. We must recognise that the private sector is already attracting hundreds of millions of pounds of private investment equity funding into the sector in this country. There are lessons to be learned from how the private sector is doing that. Then, as the Chancellor has been talking about in the last couple of weeks, pension fund investment for infrastructure should include sport, leisure and physical activity.

Good morning. You have already touched on some kinds of benefit that would not need significant amounts of funding, but I want to delve a little bit deeper into that. Peter, what benefits that would not need significant amounts of funding would you advocate for?

For local authorities to continue to provide the current levels of service in the context of leisure facilities and sports provision, local government, which is facing a funding crisis, needs a three-year settlement. We also need to address the rising demands on adult social care, children’s social care and homelessness. However, without a statutory duty and funding to provide sports and leisure facilities, we will see a continued decline in those services and facilities in the face of the pressures that local government is under. There has been a substantial shift towards the idea of an active wellbeing service that tries to marry up the public health agenda, ensuring that people are fit, healthy and active, with leisure facilities. We know that about 94% of all public leisure facilities in the UK accommodate social prescribing from the NHS, with GPs referring patients for active lifestyle measures. That certainly opens up new streams of income for leisure facilities. Fundamentally, however, we have an ageing stock of public facilities, two thirds of which probably would not make the modern grade. In the energy crisis of 2021, a swathe of local swimming baths and sports facilities had to close because they were facing nearly a 200% increase in energy costs. It was especially extortionate in the context of the money required to heat and light giant pools of water and buildings with high ceilings. Funding is therefore constrained. We need more investment, whether it is public or private, to maintain the range of facilities that we currently offer.

We are trying to get what things with no significant price tag on them we could derive some benefit from. First, in a positive sense, we feel that the Football Foundation is making good progress. We are delivering against our local football facility plans in every local authority and hopefully you, as MPs, have seen some of the impact we are having. We could be supported by some quite small practical things to help us get our grants out to community clubs and schools more quickly. That would make a big difference on the ground. I will try to name a few to help the Committee. The first thing is planning. Planning is meant to take 13 weeks, but the average time for planning that we get for our projects is 22 weeks. Unfortunately what happens, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, is that planning officers will wait until the very last possible minute before putting in loads of supplementary questions to start the planning clock again. That might sound like just a bureaucratic issue, but the fixed costs that we have agreed for a project have to be reset, which puts up the cost of everything we are doing, which means that the grant values we can put out across the country go down. I understand that it is not the choice of the planning officers, but getting resources for them would mean we can get planning applications approved more quickly. That would save costs for us and our funders and would mean we can deliver more projects sooner, which is what the community wants. The second thing is biodiversity net gain. This is a new regulation that has come in through DEFRA. It is a very well-meaning regulation that is trying to assure the environmental diversity of our spaces and environments, and we support the principle, but we feel that it has been disproportionately applied to community sports facilities, which are about open space and getting people active. We are already paying over £1.8 million into biodiversity net gains. That is about £70,000 per community project that we have done since the regulation came in. We feel that that is a disproportionate cost and that most of the money is coming from the public purse and could be better spent directly on community sports facilities. Changing the application of the regulations would be a helpful and beneficial change for us. Thirdly, and this speaks directly to the point about the pressure on local authorities, is there any way the Government could help to fast-track asset transfers? Jo, you will know that East Leigh football club in your constituency is taking on a site from the local authority as part of our home advantage campaign. We support that initiative, because we believe that if sport takes on ownership and responsibility for its own assets within the community, it will serve, protect and maintain them better, and they can use organisations like ours for funding. Anything that the centre can do to encourage asset transfers, relieve pressure on local authorities and help communities engage their facilities would be brilliant. The last thing, if I can have one more, is zero VAT rating on capital construction for community sports facilities. We are getting £80 million a year from the Exchequer and paying X% back when we have to pay the VAT on the construction. I know there will be lots of pressing arguments from the Treasury about why they cannot do that but it just seems like a false economy to me.

Interesting. Huw, has Robert Sullivan stolen your thunder?

He is a good guy, you know. I will see what I can do. There are three things, for me. I think the Government can be much smarter about how they use funding that comes through to sport, recreation and physical activity in the short term to drive demand for the services. Funding is quite complicated, with complex pockets and isolation. What will help services in the short term is driving demand, especially around gyms, sports and leisure centres, which are what ukactive represents. In the last 48 hours, there has been a great story about colon cancer and the role of exercise, which has got huge national and global coverage. The story is that 66% of cancer rehabilitation takes place in leisure centres. There is a great opportunity to scale the role that these services play, both public and private. Look at the two main reasons why we have long-term sick in this country right now: musculoskeletal issues and mental health. Gyms and sports and leisure centres can play a preventative role in supporting people in those areas and addressing issues of poor health. For example, ukactive ran a very successful two-year project creating musculoskeletal hubs in leisure facilities, resulting in a 44% uplift in improvement in the quality of people’s lives, allowing them to live a more fulfilling life and to get back to work. The role that gyms and leisure centres can play in those frontline issues involving huge amounts of economic costs for the country is huge. That is something that could happen in this Parliament, without a doubt. I agree with Rob and Peter about planning. Our private operators in particular have a long pipeline of opportunities that they are keen to open across all communities in the country. They are probably taking longer than operators want, so there is a planning issue there. There is also a planning issue around how facilities work together with local authorities to provide strategic plans for what they have. I live in the London borough of Wandsworth. I have a lot of public and private facilities in my immediate jurisdiction around where I live in Tooting. The strategic conversation about how you get the best out of those services in a complementary manner is probably not happening. Finally, from the conversations that we have been having and have been involved in, we know that there is a genuine appetite for pension fund investment in the sector. There is a role for Government to support the underwriting of the risk there or to support alternative streams coming into the sector, which in the current economic environment is not necessarily going to come from the Exchequer.

Huw, you have mentioned that the Government’s holiday activities and food programmes suffer from inefficiencies. What would you like to see changing?

I echo what Ali Oliver from YST has said about long-term consistency of investment. Inefficiencies happen because there is no guarantee of investment in these programmes. As a result, deliverers and operators on the ground have to make decisions about what will happen when the funding announcements go right to the wire and people are let go. HAF, in particular, has had a consistent level of annual frustration about not having a long-term plan. Across the sector, it is also worth recognising the level of frustration and regret that the opening school facilities programme was cancelled by the Government without an alternative in place. The programme was supporting 1,500 schools and 180,000 young people outside of school hours. That felt like a regressive move.

I strongly endorse that point about the opening school facilities programme. For balance, though, the sports sector has to take responsibility as well. I would not want to sit here and come out with a long list of things for the Government to do. Sport has a responsibility to organise itself to be more strategic about a place-based approach and about where it invests, and to try to come together and collaborate a little bit better on how we can use public funding and those advantages. It is our responsibility to be smarter about that. As Huw said, we are all working hard to try to unlock different forms of investment. There is a lot of work and responsibility for the sports side, trying to make change and get genuine improvement and transformation in our facilities. I do not want you to feel that we are sitting here talking about loads of things that we want from the Government. We are trying to take responsibility and are working hard with our plans to do that. This is about collaboration and partnership.

Very good. Let’s move on to Tom Rutland.

Would you like to see wider use of place-based funding to improve diversity in the sports and activities available and the people participating? Perhaps I will turn to Peter first. How might you improve the model?

Local government funds the sector to the tune of £1.4 billion per annum. That is probably the largest source of public funding for the sector; it compares with about £275 million-worth of funding that comes through the sporting bodies. Of course, that money is very important and welcome, but perhaps part of the challenge becomes local decision making about facilities. The question of local places being able to think strategically about what local need is, what local need would work and indeed what facilities already exist is perhaps sometimes challenged by the nature of how the funding process currently works. There are already strong partnerships not just between local authorities and sports providers, or indeed sports funding bodies, but across the system. For example, they also join NHS and health in making sure that we are providing facilities that can be used for social prescribing and supporting provision for MSK and mental health services, as well as skills and employment support that may well be addressing issues in the context of people looking for pathways to employment who might need that sort of health support, too. Local authorities will always advocate that we know our local communities and know them well. We know what will serve them, particularly the under-represented groups that have challenges in accessing sporting, recreational and leisure activities. We strongly advocate for a greater focus on place. The current model has strengths to bring in funding, but we would encourage a greater emphasis on place-based approaches.

The focus on place led by Sport England has proved a vital improvement in how we work. It allows us to concentrate our strategic thinking in a given area and work out how to balance the community-wide need and the sporting need and bring all that together. There is your plan there, Tom: it is based on direct local community engagement in that place and works around what the provision is now, what the demand is, how that demand will grow and how we can create the delta change to get everybody in a place where they want to play community sport. Place-led provision in partnership with Sport England bringing the revenue programme interventions on top of the capital delivered to get things integrated is an important change.

There are two things from me. First, I think ukactive could be doing more work, especially with Active Partnerships, to make sure that all the facilities in respective ecosystems on the ground are joined up. Historically, gyms and sports and leisure centres have probably not been as close to the work of Active Partnerships, and they are a key agent on the ground. From our side, we are committed to working with Active Partnerships to make sure that everything is joined up on the ground. The places work is very important as the deliverer on the ground. The real opportunity is to make sure that this is joined up with the strategic decisions, especially around the missions. Take the health mission, for example. How can the place-based work be the deliverer of a lot of those outcomes that people are looking at for the health mission, for example? The shifts from treatment to prevention and from hospital to community, and the work that Active Partnerships does in partnership with all three of our respective organisations, are important as the deliverer on the ground. Our facilities are the deliverers of that success or failure. But how can you connect the health mission, which feels right up here just now, with the work on the ground with the place-based work?

Peter, local councils do not currently have a statutory obligation to fund sport or leisure. I might know your answer to this question already, but would you welcome the introduction of a statutory duty on councils to support local sport, or would that be counterproductive?

I think it will surprise the Committee to learn that the Local Government Association’s view is that statutory duties must be followed by funding. We cannot continue to ask local government to take on additional responsibilities when we believe that there is an £8.4 billion gap now in the pressures that local government is under. Those pressures are fundamentally about the demand-led pressures that local authorities have legal, statutory and moral duties to address: special educational needs, children who are looked after, adult social care for those who need it, and temporary accommodation and homelessness. All of those are under extreme pressure. We continue to provide leisure and sports facilities and community sports initiatives, because they are incredibly important. It is a testament to the work that local authorities have done in partnership with the sector that it still survives after 15 years of quite difficult financial circumstances. Statutory duties would make that challenge even more difficult in the current environment. It would probably place even more burden on already overstretched local authorities. I am sure that the Public Accounts Committee would be asking very deep and searching questions about local authorities being burdened with duties that are not followed by funding.

This is another question for you, Peter. Looking at other sources of funding, research by the Home Builders Federation has shown that there is up to £2.8 billion in unused home builder contributions being held by local authorities. The LTA has described this as a “significant missed opportunity from local authorities to secure funding for the building or renovation of sports facilities”. How can that missed opportunity be addressed?

First, we need to be mindful of an alarmist number published by an organisation that is in the business of representing the interests of house builders. The community infrastructure levy and section 106 agreements that obtain moneys for public benefit are very often pooled from a high number of different developments. For a sports facility that will cost you £40 million to build, you will need to take contributions from community infrastructure levy or section 106 agreements across six developments to pool that money to build the infrastructure that is identified as being required. We need to see that number in the context of a point in time when those moneys are pooled. Local authorities absolutely will spend significant headspace on making sure that they have clear infrastructure plans that involve providing community sports facilities, leisure activities and public open spaces for which we ask for contributions from the private sector and house builders. Of course, that is entirely appropriate, because population increases mean an increased demand for services, and we need somebody to pay for them. If it is not from private developers benefiting from the uplift in land values and the sale of their products, ultimately the taxpayer will have to foot the bill. It is entirely right that we have a mechanism that enables us to do that. However, there are wider challenges to the delivery of projects. Two thirds of facilities in the ownership of local authorities are well past their sell-by date. Local authorities will very often need not only to seek contributions from public benefit, but to look at cross-subsidy models working with developers to be able to re-provide those facilities in partnership. It is a complex area. We need to be very mindful that although it can appear to be an easy fix, the reality is very different.

Before I turn to Rob, is there anything that you think local authorities could be doing to spend the money more quickly, or would that be counterproductive?

In the context of a large sports facility that a local authority has identified as being needed in the context of its infrastructure delivery plan, it may well take a significant number of years for developments to come forward to effectively fund the overall quantum of need. That is particularly challenging in areas of high growth. The moneys have to be held before they can be deployed. There are challenges in some environments, and particularly in providing healthcare facilities, for example. We invariably see lots of community tension building up where a local authority collects moneys under the CIL and section 106 on behalf of healthcare spending, but the decisions to spend that money do not sit with the local authorities. The funds sit with the NHS to provide primary healthcare facilities in particular, which are always a bugbear of community debate. Nevertheless, if you have identified that you need to build a £40 million sports facility and you have not yet obtained the quantum that you need to build it, those moneys need to sit waiting to be deployed at the appropriate moment.

The unspent money is not necessarily unallocated. It may be waiting for additional contributions to meet a project.

Every penny that is obtained via the community infrastructure levy or by a section 106 agreement has an earmarked destination. The moneys could not be collected were it not for either an infrastructure delivery plan or a legal agreement that sets out what the community needs and benefits are. The idea that local authorities are just collecting billions of pounds’ worth of cash and leaving it in a bank account somewhere gathering dust and interest payments is unfortunately not quite true. Every single penny will need to be deployed at the appropriate moment on the appropriate identified project.

Yes, that is correct. The £2.8 billion, or whatever the dramatic alarmist number is, will be allocated. From our perspective, the key thing is to change the process. Our frustration is that we have a very clear plan of what we want to do in every local authority. Unfortunately, what quite often happens is that developers will do a deal with a local authority, come up with their masterplan for the area, work out the best possible places to build the thing that they want to build, and then just slot in the sports facility where they can at the end. That will not bear any relation to the work that we have done in advance showing the community needs. Our request—and it could be a helpful recommendation—is to get the strategic mapping of community sports facilities higher up the discussion chain with the local authorities and developers. Facilities could then be planned in earlier and be in local authority masterplans along with the 106 money, or whatever the CIL money might be, being properly placed against the thing that the community actually needs, rather than the thing that is planned at the very end because they know they need to do something. Otherwise, by the time it comes to the Football Foundation for additional funding, it is often not what the community needs or wants and is therefore not a good use of that money. I suggest aiming at the process rather than attacking the quantum.

Do you see the wrong kinds of facilities being built, as well as facilities being built in the wrong places, or is it one or the other?

Not always, but outcomes are not always optimal. That is our point. If we can get higher up into the planning discussion and share our plans—I am sure ukactive would say something similar—we can be better co-ordinated and the money released from developers could go to exactly the right thing in exactly the right place.

This demonstrates the fundamental challenge to local authorities in the context of how to provide the facilities and the appropriate level of spatial planning that they know their communities need. The Government have announced that, as part of the devolution programme, we will see a return to regional spatial planning, which will be very helpful for the co-ordination of the planning process across a larger area. It will also mean that when it comes to providing for sport, we can have evidence to support a more coherent understanding at a larger scale beyond local district councils. In the absence of public money—the £975 million that we think we need to upgrade and provide the community sports facilities that we need—local authorities will enter into agreements with developers or seek to obtain from developers the provision of community benefit and community sports facilities. That means that where facilities go will never be perfect, but in the absence of local authorities leading it, we have to look to other mechanisms.

To be clear, we are not asking local authorities to lead. We are asking them to engage directly with the plans that are already in front of them and to see the opportunities.

The Football Foundation can create multi-use facilities. If you were feeding in your advice, I suppose organisations such as the LTA might come in and say that they wanted to feed in as well, because court-based sports cannot necessarily be conducted on the kinds of pitches that the Football Federation might produce. How would you see multiple organisations feeding into these discussions?

It is a fair challenge. We build multi-purpose courts, but not to the needs and the quantum requirements of the LTA across the nation, obviously. My answer to that is what I said earlier: it behoves sport to better co-ordinate to come up with the right answers. Better collaboration from sports on what the community facility needs across given places is legitimate. I would argue for better collaboration between the sports creating that kind of strategic need across all communities.

Who drives that? Who co-ordinates it?

Sport England would be in a good place to do it. We would be happy to do it. We already run a multi-sport programme, where we are delivering our sites to all football, but 70% of our sites deliver football plus other sports. That is an important part of what we do. On Tom’s point, could Sport England do more? Could it be more co-ordinated? Yes, it could. Would funding need to be attached to help us to do it and keep all our partners happy? Yes, but that is not unachievable, because all the sports can bring to the table the extension of the partnership. That is the idea that redistribution from sport alongside public money, local authority money and community money, can unlock this transformation.

Huw, what can be done to ensure equal opportunity for clubs of all sizes to access the same facilities?

Among the organisations I represent, there is quite a lot of crossover between gyms, pools, leisure centres and other sports facilities. Perhaps 20 to 25 different sports have access. There is already quite a lot of integration. In addition, a considerable number of the programmes that these leisure facilities provide are already subsidised to support individual cohorts or individual organisations and groups. Thirdly, a lot of these facilities are commercial operations looking to make sure that they can drive success and growth, deliver what they need to deliver for the local community and ensure employment. It is really important that that sort of commercial dynamic is recognised. Coming out of the pandemic, there have been higher levels of operating costs and lower levels of reserves. Individual facilities are doing a great deal, working with their local communities to support particular projects, groups and organisations to access facilities in their local areas.

One of the good things about being a grant giver is that you can set the terms and conditions of the grant at the moment of award. Effectively, you can leverage your capital to create impact and outcomes, and that is what we are focused on. We will not award a grant to a local community club or school unless we can see the programme of usage on that site and the different demographics and the under-represented groups who will use it. We want to be reassured about the number of women and girls using the site, and be confident it is targeting all the right users, demographics and participants over time that we want to see. We feel that that is one of the most powerful things about our ability to make capital grant awards: we can ask for those things, and we can go back in and check. Our support and impact team will go into those sites and ensure that the outcomes we want to see for the users, the communities engaged and the levels of activity are happening. That is an important part of our work.

Peter, what are the benefits of community asset transfer, specifically regarding facilities? How could the process be made easier?

The sports and leisure infrastructure that local authorities provide is relied on by about 75% of the entirety of the grassroots club and sporting community. The assets under our management are very important to the overall question. As we have already identified in this session, the challenge of community asset transfer arises from the wider challenges of public finance, certainly in the context of large facilities that cost the taxpayer, through local authorities, considerable sums to run. In the conversation that might have to happen about the reuse, deployment or closure of a facility, it is incredibly important to find and identify organisations—community or otherwise—that can come forward to take ownership of the facility. Local authorities are under the best value duty. Very often, any commercial conversation about sporting facilities can get bogged down in challenges in the procurement process. Major organisations, sporting or otherwise, may want to come forward to make bids on community facilities that might end up in different uses. There are also stings in the tail of community asset transfers. For example, an asset might be transferred to another organisation that might not have the same financial sustainability as the public sector. What happens to a facility that ends up facing challenges? I can think of an instance of a slightly higher-profile sports facility being transferred to a parish council that could not effectively cover the costs, and that forced the closure of the facility. In circumstances where asset transfer works and we can identify organisations that are willing to step forward and step up to the plate, it definitely works, but there are challenges in the wider system to make it work in every circumstance. Ultimately, we have to ask what type of community and sports facility provision we want as a country and for our local communities. We have to acknowledge that there will be some circumstances in which we need to make sure that there is provision. That provision will invariably need to be in places that cannot sustain commercially sensitive and commercially viable locations. Nevertheless, it is important to provide them.

A point of principle is that the Football Foundation, the FA and the Premier League are very keen to see as many grassroots football facilities as possible within the ownership and control of football itself. That is because we think that the community and the clubs are the best people to love, maintain, support and run those sites. We are working hard to achieve that. The point about financial sustainability is well made. Jo Platt will know about the site in her constituency. Alongside the asset transfer, we are providing a catering unit to the club. That catering unit is the answer to the financial sustainability question. We give them a grant to generate their own revenue on the site, and that way it becomes a self-sustaining asset transfer for the club as well.

I have another question for Peter Mason, which goes back to the question about CIL money and section 106. What should be done to ensure that new developments deliver on the national planning policy framework recommendations to incorporate recreational and sporting spaces?

This speaks to some of the issues that were raised earlier about capacity in local authorities and the planning system. Local authorities face the same challenges in the context of providing community and sports facilities. The £8.4 billion gap in local government funding is exactly the same challenge that local authorities face in the context of providing a comprehensive, accessible, modern and dynamic planning service. We need to make sure that local authorities have the appropriate resources for the scale and breadth of services and functions that they are being asked to deliver. Very often, to secure community benefit, local authorities will work very creatively with developers, who are the agents of change in local communities when bringing forward developments. That community benefit might be an off-site payment to improve or increase the accessibility of a community sports facility, pitches or indeed improvements to a local park or an open space. On very large-scale developments, a local authority may well ask a developer to make provision within its land area for an identified community facility that sits within a council’s infrastructure plan. We need mental, creative and entrepreneurial dexterity in local authorities to secure those things and, from developers, the willingness to do that. With a regional spatial strategy and the return to a more coherent map of co-ordinated local planning, a metropolitan combined authority area, or indeed a combined authority area, should have the ability to identify where that need might be through a planning system. It could well be that a leisure centre is needed in the west area of a large metropolitan combined authority area rather than the east. It may well be that sports pitches need to be in a particular location. We need to plan in partnership, in a system that is dynamic and that works. Ultimately, in the context of dealing with the issue of who pays, local authorities are under incredible pressure. We will look to developers to bring forward facilities within their purview rather than doing it ourselves.

Drawing on your last point about pressure and local plans being in place, even if they are not up to date, do you think that planners play or should be playing a critical role—not so much in pushing back, but in forcing developers to be creative? Planners are sometimes the voice of communities. Do you feel that there should be additional focus on the planners to make sure that this provision is in place?

I speak in defence of the local authority planner, who often comes under lots of constraint and pressure from local communities, and indeed perhaps some of our national political discourse. Planners working in local authorities now represent a small minority of overall trained planners. In the last 20 years, we have seen a big shift away from planners working in the public sector to working in private practice. The planners who remain in local authorities remain because of their commitment to public duty and public service. Every day they work to negotiate with hard-nosed, commercially minded organisations that want to achieve the best possible financial return for their own investment in bringing forward a piece of land. To be supported by a coherent plan, a planner needs to know that there are objectives and know that in the community that they serve there is a need for x number of sports pitches and a leisure facility of a particular type and variety. They need the ability to negotiate with developers as the agents of change to secure those facilities, either on the sites that are being brought forward as part of comprehensive regeneration or to secure funding for identified projects that might be off. There are challenges in the broader system, where developers might want to be maximising rental yields from the provision of amenities, private gyms and private spaces that invariably cannot be accessed by the public. Very often, planners will negotiate to try to prise open those facilities for use by the wider community. Those are the types of conversation that happen pretty much every day in planning departments up and down the country.

I am thinking about under-represented groups. In your written evidence, Peter, you said that councils could deliver targeted programmes to improve access to sport for all. What would you like to see rolled out to increase inclusivity across the country? What impact will local government reorganisation have on that?

Local authorities know their local communities. Each part of our country is wonderfully diverse, and different areas of our country will need to respond to different local challenges. Southall is one of our communities in the London borough of Ealing. It is particularly south Asian in character, and it has very high rates of diabetes, hypertension and other health challenges, and low levels of public activity and participation. Over the last few years, we have developed programmes. Let’s Ride Southall is an example of a community-based initiative that seeks to use community organising tactics to bring communities together to understand the types of activity that they would like and work with them to provide the enabling funding and facilities. We have been able to give away thousands of bikes. Every third bike contains a GPS tracker that lets us obtain rich data and information about how physical activity is happening in a town, to the extent that we can use that information to target improvements to our highways and our pavements, knowing areas where there is sharp braking, or indeed speeds, and swerving to avoid traffic. The programme has created a community that is now very involved and active, but also very demanding of its local authority in how we prioritise funding for all parts of the local authority, whether highways or sports investment. That is an example of understanding local communities. That will happen in any local authority context, and that is why the question of where the provision overall is managed and maintained has to be place-based. There may well be local government reorganisation that seeks to draw different red lines on maps, but certainly the need to be responsive and engaged in local communities will always be there. We would love to see some development in data sharing so that local authorities can learn from each other about what interventions might be needed in future. While we might be able to provide some incredible evidence from the Let’s Ride Southall programme, initiatives like that are perhaps not shared as much as they might be at the national level.

May I ask for answers to be a little bit shorter, please, because we are beginning to run over our time?

Robert, you said that sport has a responsibility. What lessons can be learned from examples such as Everton FC’s community foundation’s “The People’s Place”? What could other clubs be doing?

This builds on the last question, and it is one of the biggest learnings of the Football Foundation. The mantra “If you build it, they will come” is nonsense; you have to spend the time up front to do the community engagement and listen to what a community or place needs, and that shapes the facility and the programmes around it that you build. That is what will bring the divergent parts of all communities together to get value. The example in Everton is a good one. It deals directly with some difficult social issues in that part of Liverpool, and it has had some real success and breakthrough. When we can get those kinds of partnership together, bringing Football Foundation funding alongside the Premier League clubs in particular and their community foundations, you have the power of our funding and the power of their brand and their programmes to attract people with a local identity who want to get involved and engaged and who will benefit. It is a very powerful example, and there are lots of different examples across the country of Premier League and Football League community trusts who know their communities really well and combine the facility with the interventions.

Huw, how best can we tackle drop-out rates—especially for women and girls, who generally have a higher drop-out rate?

Consumer polling from ukactive shows that there is a growing demand for diversity of opportunity. There are record numbers of visits to gyms, pools and leisure centres: 600 million visits last year. One in six adults in the country is a member of a facility. There is a growing recognition of health and wellbeing as something that people want to prioritise. An average person would be three times more likely to invest in health and wellbeing compared with going to a restaurant or the pub. The identity association with health and wellbeing is very important. On women and girls, Sport England’s Active Lives survey shows that 7.6 million women are using our facilities regularly. Our Safer Spaces work with Sport England, which we are very proud of, is to make our facilities as inclusive as they possibly can be, looking at everything from workforce training through to the infrastructure to the set-up, to make sure that although there are societal issues around behaviour and intimidation that will not end at our threshold, we do as much as we can to make these facilities as welcoming and as inclusive as they can possibly be. That is important for adults, but we are finding from our engagement with girls under 16 a growing desire to look at group exercise classes and wider fitness as an alternative to traditional sports. It is important for us to make sure that there is a diversity of offer for girls under 16, and for all women.

I want to follow on with inclusivity. I have spoken a lot to parents of children with additional or special educational needs and they have reflected that there is often a lack of sporting facilities and opportunities for their young people. This is an open question for the panel: do you feel that more could be done to enable people with additional needs to access sport, which they would love to do?

I am happy to take that question. Yes, but there has to be a balance between the physical space, the culture and the environment of what is being delivered. From a Football Foundation perspective, we can use our grant funding to try to influence programmes and what is going on in a particular space and to bring in providers and coaches with the specialist experience to help and facilitate. However, there is also the matter of the culture of the sport that is being delivered and how open it is to being inclusive and understanding the different requirements of individuals and their needs. It is a kind of mixed-economy challenge for the sports. With our capital, we can bring requirements. It is up to the governing bodies to work with their providers and their clubs to try to meet those challenges, which they already do a good job of, but it will never be perfect.

I reinforce what Rob said. From our perspective, we are keen to see members’ facilities doing more work with schools across the whole estate. It would need to be a two-way process. It is not just about access to the facilities during quieter periods and off-peak times; it is also about the ability of the staff and the workforce to go in and support the educational side and support teachers in the delivery of physical education. There is an opportunity for us and our members to collaborate with schools to provide a much more fulfilling offer of physical education.

I know that we are short of time, but can we talk briefly about schools and collaboration with clubs? I think we should probably say at the outset that the work of a number of sports and national governing bodies has been fantastic over the years. Some of the programmes that exist are incredibly well attended and very successful, but the debate remains—you will all be familiar with this—about how schools can best be put in touch with clubs, and how they know what the opportunities are. The debate centres on the question whether we should have a more centralised and centrally managed approach, usually through councils, or something more devolved whereby schools make individual decisions and you have to make more individual connections. The centralised model was never totally centralised and the devolved model is not totally devolved, but there has been a difference in the balance over the years. Notwithstanding my very long question, your challenge is to give a very tight answer with the pros and cons of those two approaches. In the interests of time, Peter, I will assume that you lean more towards the council-led approach—if that is wrong, you may say so—so I will turn to Robert and Huw first.

I am probably not going to surprise you. My answer will always be to start with the place, the facility and the capital. That is the best way to bring schools and clubs together: if every school has brilliant sports facilities that are well-funded, and part of the funding for those schools includes requirements to bring the community clubs into those spaces so that the kids are comfortable and used to playing in the same place all the time and it is familiar to them. That is how you build the school‑club links, and that would be my priority. The schools-sports partnership back in the day was hugely valuable, and it did an amazing amount of work, but it is an expensive revenue programme. My view is that capital expenditure is always more of a sustainable delivery model and will therefore have a better long-term fit because the pressure of a schools-sports partnership is that you have to keep funding it year on year on year, when the facilities can have a 20-year payback to their communities. In an ideal world, you do both, but if you had to prioritise, I would focus on the facilities.

Thank you, although that does sound a bit like “If you build it, they will come.” Huw?

Our members’ facilities are in very close proximity to schools across the whole country. The immediate opportunity is for ukactive to work closely with the Active Partnerships and the Youth Sport Trust on creating those partnerships. That is something that is well within the ability of our organisation to work together to deliver.

Brilliant. I will turn to Peter, but this is potentially a question for all three of you: if there is a move back towards the old schools-sports partnerships approach, does that have to be on top of the provision for the PE and school sport premium, or do you believe that it can replace part of the PE and school sport premium?

It would need to be in addition to it, in the context of the funding pressures that dedicated school grants are under in the context of schools funding. The other thing that we must bear in mind in this entire question is that very often the school environment is not the right environment for every child who needs to think about their choices for sport and physical activity. Very often, school environments are not the right environment for young people who have particular barriers with authority, or even challenges in their own education. Putting the expectation on them that school is the right environment for sports can sometimes be a bit of a challenge.

I am not going to sit here and say that some money should be taken away from sport; I will say that it should definitely be on top. However, I will always be in favour of better measurement and evaluation of the sporting and physical activity outcomes of schools. That has been nowhere recently, and it would be a beneficial addition to educational inspection.

Schools sometimes complain that they are asked too much about how they use PE and the school sport premium. What is your recommendation for the further measurement of outcomes?

For me, physical activity outcomes in primary school and competitive sport offers around good facilities in secondary school should be directly Ofsted-measured. I know that the building of the asset requirements is controversial, but from a sports perspective I think it would be hugely beneficial.

Just the same: a clear strategy with clear outcomes.

Thank you all very much.

Very prompt, Damian—thank you very much. Thank you all for coming in today. Are there any other questions that you hoped we would ask, or any final points that you want to share with us?

I think it is about having real clarity as to what the Government strategy is around investment in the sector and the design outcomes that you want. Where do you want to put your real focus? Is it around maintaining good health and addressing poor health alongside the social connectivity and the role that the sector plays? We need real clarity about what the overarching strategic vision is from the Government and how our sector can be a solution in supporting and delivering it.

High-quality sports facilities in the right places will make a real difference to people’s lives. Let us keep that in focus.

It is about funded local authorities with three-year long-term settlements that have the ability to deliver against our statutory demands, but also the incredibly important things that we do in the provision of sports and community facilities.

It sounds like quite a shopping list. Thank you all very much for your time today. Examination of witness Witness: Tim Hollingsworth.

For our second panel, we are joined by Tim Hollingsworth OBE, the CEO of Sport England. Tim has recently announced that he will be leaving Sport England at the end of July, so this will be the last time that the Committee can grill him. It also means that he can tell us what he really thinks.

Possibly, Chair, yes.

With that in mind, I will start by asking Tim how supported he has felt from the Government in meeting his target of growing and developing grassroots sport and getting more people active across England.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everybody. There are two ways to answer that question, and both are true. One is “Extremely well”. Through the Department, the officials, the way we work daily, the way that the money has been provided from the Exchequer and the national lottery, we feel very supported in our strategy and ambition and what we are seeking to do with uniting the movement. I think there is a greater understanding—I am sure we will get into this; it was mentioned by your previous witnesses—of a move to place-based working and thinking more about the communities that we are seeking to serve. There is a lot there that feels very aligned with the Government and, from a departmental point of view, it feels very supportive of what we are seeking to achieve. It is always challenging, but supported. What I think has been less so is the wider Government mission and what we can do to contribute to it, whether that is the health benefits to the nation and being more preventative or thinking about not just the health and wellbeing of our young people, but their behaviour, attainment and attendance at school. If we think about criminal justice and how we can help to rehabilitate through sport and physical activity, or how in protecting our places and spaces we create lovely places for people to go, play and visit, I have not felt the same sense of connection of sport and physical activity to what the Government—regardless of which Government it is—is seeking to achieve for the people it serves. At a micro level we are pretty well supported, but from a macro point of view it could be done better.

So it is more about a strategic vision for the power of sport and physical activity right across all different Government Departments. We always use the words “joined-up thinking”.

Yes.

And that is what you are looking for. Given the expertise that you have gained in the role, if you were advising the Government on that, how would it happen? What would you like to see? How could it be better funded, facilitated and provided?

All those things are important. The cross-Government agenda, which has been raised already this morning, is a very important starting point. If you are looking at education or health, having the opportunity for sport and physical activity to contribute higher up the agenda would be a huge step forward in our ability as a sector. As Robert Sullivan said particularly well, this is not the sector asking. We know that we have a huge amount that we need to contribute and bring, but we are not necessarily given the levers to effect the change that people are looking for. We are not going to move the dial on people’s health and wellbeing unless we have a more preventative health agenda that builds sport and physical activity into our daily lives. Our children and young people are not going to attain in the way we want unless we build in a more active day in schools and think about the role of PE in the curriculum and the use of facilities in schools in a much more collaborative way. It is about joined-up thinking in that way. Forgive me for mentioning this, Damian, but there was a previous Government ambition to set up a taskforce to bring the various bits of government together, have the conversation at ministerial level and tie up the otherwise very disparate approaches that were being taken, bringing in local government, which is important, and bringing the devolved authorities together as well. There is an opportunity that starts with that collaboration, before you get on to funding. If you direct the funding in a more effective and collaborative way, we can effect sustained systemic change. What happens now is that we see huge amounts of individual excellence and delivery across all parts of government, but it does not co-ordinate enough to create the real change that we want to see.

You have submitted written evidence to our inquiry. Which of the recommendations in it do you see as the most important? What is the cornerstone?

Our suggestion of moving to a more preventative health agenda is critical. So much flows from that. I would probably argue in principle for leisure services to be made statutory under public health within local authorities, for example; I know that Peter Mason made the point about that needing to follow with resources. It is about making the future of our sport and leisure much more connected to public health. We need to think about how gyms and fitness centres can be much more a part of the medical solutions that we are seeking for people, as Huw Edwards referred to, and about the role that social prescribing plays. We know that if people are more active in daily life, they are happier, healthier, more connected to their communities and more likely to be fit for work, so ultimately it contributes to the growth agenda. That is No. 1. I have another recommendation that probably comes a very close second, which goes back to schools. I am sure we will talk about that.

Yes, we will, but first we will move on to Bayo.

Welcome, Tim. What are you doing to close the gap between different sporting levels and to encourage collaboration?

It is strategically the absolute cornerstone of Sport England’s work. Uniting the Movement was a strategy that was published nearly four years ago now, as a decade-long view of how we as a sector, but also as a society, need to work much harder to tackle the stubborn inequalities that exist within sport and physical activity. The evidence is there. The Active Lives survey that we do as a national statistic demonstrates that there is significant variance in opportunities to access and enjoy sport and physical activity in this country. One thing that we are doing very directly under that is that, very disproportionately and unashamedly, we are prioritising our resource to the communities that have previously been underserved. We are doing that in three ways, fundamentally. The first is that in our investment and support for national governing bodies and the like, we are being much clearer and more directive about what that money could and should be focused on doing, for example with opportunities for disabled people and for women and girls, who previously have not been as well served by provision. The second major change is about working much more directly to a locally driven place-based agenda, recognising—as you will have seen from the evidence you have received, and as you have certainly heard this morning—that that is the key to genuinely engaging communities that might otherwise feel underserved by sport, and recognising that inequality exists. Of all the metrics for where inactivity in this country is highest, the biggest single metric is that it is in areas of highest social and economic deprivation. There is a mapping of inactivity to the circumstances in which people are living their lives, their postcode and their bank balance. The fundamental shift in our resource is to place-based investment, with £250 million over five years going primarily to up to 90 places in England that we know have some of the highest areas of deprivation and inequality and, as a consequence, the highest levels of inactivity. We are fundamentally seeking to readdress these challenges through investment.

Thank you for that. Going back to the place-based aspect, what role should schools play in that?

It is critical that as we think about a place, we start with three things. Who are the communities who live there? What are the local organisations that can be trusted by those communities? What are the facilities and the opportunities that we have to leverage to enable activity to happen? Schools are at the heart of that, because they understand and work with the local population—the parents as well as the children. In many cases, they also have the facilities and space to help support that activity better. I can give you a very real recent example, with figures that were published out of Bradford a couple of weeks ago. The JU:MP programme, which is Sport England-funded, was a substantial investment by us, working closely with Bradford as a city. That programme has engaged 30,000 families and young people in Bradford, principally from an Asian background, to think about what they want to do differently, the community spaces they want and the programmes they want to be more active. The results we published 10 days ago were groundbreaking in that respect. By engaging the local community, giving them the trust to think better about what they need, we have seen increases of up to 70 minutes per week in the activity of the young people in that area.

What was that programme called?

It is called JU:MP, as an acronym for “Join Us: Move. Play”. [Laughter.] There is worse in sports! I think it is a great example of locally driven investment and support into collaboration. To answer your question directly, schools were a key partner in helping to provide not only the environment, but the access in a trusted environment to young people. JU:MP is a really good example of a child-led approach, where you think about what they want, help them to be part of the solution and then provide that, with the involvement of local authorities, the Active Partnerships network and the schools. You can see the change. There were 30,000 families who engaged, who were previously among the most inactive in our community. The kids are now doing about 10 minutes a day more on average, which equates to 70 minutes in the week. It can be done, but there needs to be a fundamental shifting of the telescope. Historically, we have looked down on inequality from above and thought, “What can we bring to it to shift and change the dial?” I think our approach and the sector’s approach has been to turn that telescope around and ask communities what we can do for them to make it easier to be active.

In the evidence we have received, there has been concern about the drop-out rates, especially among women and girls. What is Sport England doing to address that? I suppose a caveat from me is that in my constituency there is a youth organisation called Trinity Youth Club, which is an amazing facility and set-up and is well represented, but has lost a number of girls from its football teams. Just because of facilities, we have lost them from regular activity. What would you say?

I think it goes deeper than facilities, although facilities are part of the answer. If you listened to Robert Sullivan—we work very closely with the Football Foundation in supporting the expansion of the pitch stock and capital investment—you will know that the biggest demand is also the biggest challenge on current supply, which is football pitches for women and girls. Women and girls’ football, by itself, is now the fifth most played team sport in this country. More women and girls play football than adults play rugby union, male or female. We are seeing an exponential growth of a particular sport for women and girls, which has been matched by netball and some of the programmes that they have been running. It is being matched increasingly now within cricket and rugby. Facilities are very important, because we need to make sure that we grow the facilities stock to have places to play in. Secondly, it was referred to in a different context by Huw Edwards that a welcoming cultural environment is key to supporting women and girls. That is why we have been underpinning all our activity for the last 10 years with This Girl Can, a campaign that is fundamentally about trying to demonstrate that it can be for women and girls to play sport and be active. Historically, sports clubs, community groups and facilities have not been as welcoming. The safe spaces campaign that Huw referred to is a very good example of where gyms and exercise centres are trying to tackle that. The biggest challenge, though, for the drop-off of teenage girls is how we introduce them to sport at a younger age. The physical literacy of our young people in primary school can and should be the most fundamental thing we do for our young people, which moves us on to one of my other key recommendations: we should give them the opportunity not only to have the competency and the capability to be active, but to get the fun and enjoyment. Fundamentally, we still need to see that as much more of a priority. If we make it fun and enjoyable when it is required of them—that is, when they go through the school system to 16 and get involved in PE and sport—and if we make it feel like it is for them and is welcoming, fewer girls will stop at the moment when it becomes discretionary. One of the ways in which we seek to do that is by being creative. There is a huge responsibility on the sports sector to think differently, whether it is the professional game in trying to attract crowds or, in our case, the community and grassroots sports sector thinking about how we make it relevant for people in the 21st century. It is too often based on 20th-century rules and 20th-century environments. Changing that for women and girls has been an important part of our strategic intent through This Girl Can, but I will also give you a small example of an intervention that can work. We have invested in a partnership to create an online Netflix-style platform called Studio You. It is available now for use across all secondary schools, and over 60% of secondary schools have taken it up. It is basically a tool to enable girls, but also their PE teachers, to understand how they can make movement and activity more fun and enjoyable. It is not just traditional sports; it is also dance, Zumba and other things we know are attractive. It does it in a way that speaks to the girls we are trying to reach. Robert Sullivan, brilliantly, said earlier that “Build it and they will come” is the biggest fallacy in facilities and sport. I completely agree. We need to grow the pitch stock to enable those who want to play sport—particularly football, but other sports as well—to have the pitches available, the slots during the day, and the clubs willing to give up the space from where they have historically been based around men’s teams. Secondly, we need to make sure that young girls’ physical literacy is such that they enjoy moving, so that when it comes to a time when it is discretionary in their life, they choose to still do it. Thirdly, we need to think differently and creatively about what might be fun, enjoyable and inclusive, particularly for teenage girls to do with their friends.

On that note, we heard from the cheerleading industry body. As you know, it is hugely fast-growing and bucks the trend in keeping teenage girls active at a time when many are dropping out of school sports. It has recently been acknowledged as a sport, but they are still not able to qualify for Sport England funding. How do you see that changing?

One of the challenges in eight weeks’ time for my successor is that we are the answer regardless of the question, in many ways, around funding. I would love to be in the position where we can think of all the bodies and organisations that are seeking funding, but we are—at this stage, at least—limited in the extent to which we can fund across absolutely every aspect. We are very well resourced compared to many organisations—our Exchequer and lottery funding combined is about £300 million a year—but it can be a challenge across the responsibilities and the obligations that we have. They can definitely access funding through the open fund, the Movement Fund, but I think the way the landscape is changing is a good example of where an organisation such as Sport England will need to think creatively about the opportunity to fund things like cheerleading in the future. We have seen it with some of the adventure sports, with the rise of skateboarding, climbing and those sorts of newer versions of sport. They are both now Olympic sports, so they fit between the two, but our landscape is changing when it comes to what we think sport is. Cheerleading is a good example: to what extent do we box off what sport is, versus allowing new bodies to come forward?

It almost feels as though you need separate pots of cash that are accessible to those sports that are bucking the trend in how they appeal to a demographic that is not necessarily being supported by the more mainstream sporting options.

As you say, a big step forward for a sport such as cheerleading is to be recognised by the sports councils, because you cannot be funded without recognition. We are looking collectively, with the other sports councils, at the recognition policy so that we are as up to date as we can be with it and so that we see bodies that come forward representing an activity and representing an opportunity to be an active person. We need to make sure that we are giving that opportunity.

It is very interesting to hear this at this stage in your tenure, when you can speak very broadly. Can I take you back to what you were saying about health in particular? Social prescribing should be a huge opportunity for sport, and sport should be a huge opportunity for the health sector. We have always had public health programmes and so on, but there is something even more elemental when you talk about work, which you also mentioned in passing. There is a cultural thing that you go to the doctor to get signed off work, whereas in reality, for many people, going to work will help keep them healthy to begin with and help them to get better. There are certain types of mental health condition where it is so much better to be around people with structure, with purposeful activity and all those kinds of things. There are savings to be made to the health service and the DWP, and there is a growth opportunity. Nobody in any political party or Government would argue with that, so why does it not happen?

It is a very good question. It goes back to my principal ambition for preventative health to be more of a factor in how, as a nation, we consider investment. I am going beyond my brief here.

Go as far beyond your brief as you like.

I know that you heard me say this on stage a couple of weeks ago, Jo, but for the £300 million that I referred to, we did the maths and it is 14 hours of the NHS budget. In how we are prioritising what we think will help that agenda, what can we do differently? I worked it out for today: it is 22 hours of the education budget. The answer must be a much more effective join-up in how we see the opportunity for people in our sector to be contributors to public health. We know from our insight into the social value of sport that we prevent 3.2 million cases of disease every year because of people being active, and we have 27% fewer sick days. You mentioned the world of work and people being more active. Social prescribing is a great opportunity. We have worked pretty hard in the last few years with the National Academy for Social Prescribing to properly understand why it is not working more effectively. I think the answer, again, is in place, if you get local GPs and primary healthcare connected to local sports clubs in a way that does not need top-down intervention at a national level. Perhaps one of the areas for investment in a health context there is the social prescriber—the person who understands the medical need and what is available in the local community. We need to get better as a sector in providing that, so that somebody who is socially prescribed perhaps thinks about joining a walking or a running club and it is a welcoming, safe and positive experience. I think that the answer is genuinely recognising that the opportunity provided for us is to support public health by creating an environment where people start taking fewer sick days, being more able to work or feeling better about themselves and their mental health and more connected to their community. Ultimately, I care passionately about sport’s role in society. Fundamentally, we should recognise the fabric of our communities that sports clubs and community groups create. I love professional sport and elite sport, as we all do, and following the Olympic and Paralympic games or the world cup, but ultimately what we are doing is giving people the opportunity to have a happier and healthier life. We should be doing everything we can to enable that by giving them the opportunity to move.

You will be delighted to know that I have been talking to the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee about a piece of work that we would like to do, maybe later in the year, on creative health and social prescribing and how we could collaborate as Committees. We are helping to shift the dial on this.

I think it is vital. Thank you for the question. We are getting better at measuring not only the impact of an investment, but the outcome. What we have been able to do is not dissimilar to what Robert Sullivan described for the Football Foundation. In making an award, you can be prescriptive about what that award is for, who you are trying to reach, what communities you want to engage and what the assumptive outputs of that are in numbers of people engaged. That is valuable information, but it is also about translating that: what is the benefit to society of that investment? One thing we have based our investment on in the last five years is a recognition that we need to reprioritise our investment away from more traditional areas, while still recognising how significant and important national sports bodies are, and more particularly into those places that have been previously underserved. Forgive me, because it goes back into the health side, but we were very taken by Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s work in the health sector and his belief in what he describes as proportionate universalism. Sport should be for everybody. You need to have a basic universal offer. Everyone should have somewhere that they can go and play, but with our investment—with our £300 million—we are unashamedly disproportionate now about where it goes. The 80 places I mentioned that we are investing in over the next five years are all characterised by inactivity. They are in areas of multiple deprivation, and very often they are also communities that have previously been the least well-served by the facility stock. That is why we are working with the Football Foundation and aligning its investment to our places, thinking about the investment that is going in through the national governing bodies and aligning it to those places. We are thinking about the active partners that we invest in in those regions, and co-ordinating that to ensure that we understand how we can best make an impact. That is how we make it work. We are very clear on the measurement of the output and increasingly using social return on investment modelling to understand the outcomes: what has been the benefit in relation to the health measures I mentioned earlier, or school attainment? In measuring school sport, we should be measuring the amount of sport and physical activity a school is doing, but also what its benefit is in attendance, behaviour and attainment. You then get into the realm of where a headteacher might be interested. I think those are the outcomes we should focus on.

I am sorry to interrupt, but it is dead hard to prove causality. It is virtually impossible.

I think the best way is to learn from the headteachers who feel it, see it and recognise it.

You know it when you see it.

I do.

There are a couple that I could highlight. I will mention Greater Manchester, if I may.

One of the reasons for mentioning that is that it was one of the first places that we chose to work in our pilot programmes. We have 12 pilot programmes. We have seen across the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester a fantastic join-up into health. The integrated care board, which I think the mayor chairs now, is fundamentally much more gearing up towards wellbeing and an understanding of Live Well and how people can have a better and happier life in Greater Manchester. Our investment into sport and physical activity support there has been a key factor in providing some of the agenda for people to be more active. I would definitely also point to areas such as Calderdale and Doncaster, where in both cases we have seen double-digit improvements in the activity levels of young people. It is giving focus, again, to how we enable places to support them to be more active.

In each case, there are always three things. I strongly recommend that this can only happen through a place-based lens, because each place is different. It is about an understanding of the community; who the locally trusted organisations are that can speak to that community and help to provide the service or the sport provision that is needed; and then the facility stock that underpins that.

Hello, Tim. I declare my interest: I was on a panel with you a few weeks back, at the GM Moving conference. It was a great conference.

Yes. What a fantastic morning.

I regularly speak about our grassroots organisations. Paul Waugh spoke about outcomes; for me it is access. How are you simplifying the funding application process and streamlining the number of different grants that are available?

One of the ways we have tried to do that is by devolving our resource and seeking to make it more accessible to the places we are working with. I am also very aware that for an organisation such as Sport England, which is a lottery distributor and has obligations to ensure that lottery money is available to local community groups and organisations, we make it as easy and as streamlined as possible. In the past year, we have repositioned how we offer our open fund into a formal single fund called the Movement Fund. We used to have a lot of different pots that were quite hard to navigate, and very often you needed to have significant experience in navigating funding applications. The Movement Fund has tried to create a much more open front door, so we ask what you are looking for and then we do the work behind the scenes to work out whether it is an appropriate investment. We are trying very hard to think about the customer journey, service delivery and what would make it easier. Accepting video applications, for example, is something that we could do, although currently we do not. Could we make the first stage of the application very basic, with three or four basic questions? How can we support people with information, not just through our website but in other areas, to enable them to feel confident that they are doing the right thing? How can we make sure that we turn the investment around more quickly? We are getting better at that. Most of our single awards are now turned around within six weeks. It is also an area that we are investing in internally, to change our internal systems and processes to be more effective and slicker, because it is a factor in our ability to get money out the door. The Movement Fund is just over a year old. We have managed to make over £21 million-worth of investment from it into about 2,500 sports clubs and organisations, but I think we have further to go.

You have talked about the Movement Fund. What advice do you provide to those who wish to apply for funding about the different types of grants that are available? Concern has come back about not funding the sports clubs’ owners or sportspeople. A lot of time is wasted undoing bids that they are not eligible for. I think that is quite a problem. What advice would you give for them to know that they are eligible for certain bids?

The Movement Fund as it is developing—it is just a year old now—is an attempt to change that. Previously, we used to run a series of different open funds, as you rightly point out, and people would have to navigate which one they felt was best for them. Now, it is essentially a single front door for Sport England open funding, so at least you know in making your initial application that you are not going to be rejected for going to the wrong fund. We have been very up-front about the criteria. We are very clear about which organisations can and cannot receive a lottery grant or in some cases an Exchequer grant; we respect the fact that there are certain communities that do not want to receive lottery grants, so we make a small amount of Exchequer funding available for that as well. We are certainly very clear about the amounts that people can invest and what programmes would be considered to be appropriate. We are keen to introduce a greater mix of capital and revenue funding. It is largely revenue-based now. It is up to £15,000 as an individual award. Then we are seeking, as I say, to make the process of application simpler when it comes to the information we need from an organisation, the financial proof we need that they can receive it, that they have a bank account and that they are an organisation that can steward our money effectively—it is public money, after all. There is further to go. One of the more innovative ways is that we work with an organisation called Crowdfunder to create a crowdfunding platform through the Movement Fund as well, so that people can apply for Sport England money to support a crowdfunding application. That has been very successful: I think that £2.13 for every £1 that we invest is leveraged through that. It is getting to a point, I hope, where people will feel that, first, they are not going to the wrong fund and, secondly, it is easier to access. There is a helpline and there are a number of information sheets. We have a newsletter for sports clubs and organisations that goes out regularly and which people can access for information about how to receive funding. The easier we can make it as a public funder, the better.

You have just touched on something, because, to go back a step, clubs need to know that funding is available. I will give the example of Leigh Boxing: when I first got back into this job, I was absolutely appalled that they were still operating in a shed. They are churning out world champions and countrywide champions, and they did not know that there was funding out there for them. What more can we do to ensure that they are getting valid information?

One answer to that is to be unashamedly more focused around local delivery and place-based investment so that it becomes more apparent in their community that there is money available and there are people to help. The active partner in the case of the boxing club through GM Moving should be, and is being, much more proactive about creating local awareness of funding. At a national level, we need to work with, in this case, England Boxing, which has a role to play in supporting clubs to make them aware where funding is available, what they can access and where they can get it. Our ambition is to allocate £160 million over the next four years through the Movement Fund. It is a big part: it is one of our four platforms of investment. Essentially, we invest through our national system partners—the consequential organisations that we need to resource, of which ukactive is a good example—and our place investment, our campaigning and our open fund. Those are the four areas where we seek to use our money effectively and steward it wisely. I want the Movement Fund to become central to people’s view that if you are a boxing club in a shed in Leigh and you want to do something that can genuinely help the community to be more active, they have a place that they can go.

You know what needs to be done and you have just spelled that out, but does Boxing UK or whoever it is need to do more?

Yes. The point was made earlier about the obligation of sports bodies to do more together. We called our strategy Uniting the Movement. The ambition behind it is to fundamentally get everyone working collectively, because we know the great support that we can give to the wider benefit of moving in our society. What that means is that England Boxing has an obligation to think about its membership and be more aware of the opportunities that can be provided, but also to work locally in a place, rather than thinking about only a streamlined example, to give one example of a governing body. It is very powerful when we can see in a place the local school and health sector working together with the national governing bodies, through the role that the active partner can play connecting them. We are not seeing that enough at the moment.

I call Natasha Irons.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I will talk a bit about volunteers, who are a massive part of community sport. All the work that happens could not happen without the people who give up their spare time and effort. We have heard evidence from London Sport that only one in four clubs has enough volunteers to meet operational demand. How can we provide greater incentives for those who choose to volunteer in this space?

It is absolutely critical, as you say, to acknowledge and recognise the amazing people who do so. Community grassroots sports relies on volunteers. There are people up and down the country running a line, manning an office or judging a competition who are doing it because they love the sport and want to help others to succeed. We have a significant proportion of people who do it: 10.5 million people volunteered in sport, community sport and activity every week in the last year. It was up half a million in the last survey, which is positive because it took a massive hit, as so much did, during the pandemic. It is absolutely right that there is a challenge in two areas. First, in society it is genuinely becoming harder to give up your time for free. People are finding that they need to work or struggling to make space available in their life alongside looking after children or parents, or whatever the challenges are. Secondly, we are not necessarily acknowledging that for people to want to give up their time, they must feel that the place they are going to is genuinely welcoming of them. I do not think that as a sector we have done enough, although we are working very hard to focus and concentrate on that. Part of that is about making it safe. In local community sport, there is a huge obligation on volunteers to make sure that the environments they create are safe for every participant. A massive focus for me is safeguarding, and understanding the welfare of participants and where it goes wrong. We have seen examples where it goes wrong; it can be horrendous to listen to individual cases and recognise the impact that they have had. One of the investments we have made as Sport England centrally, to support that, is a significant investment into regional welfare officers. Across the nation there are now 63 people in the Active Partnership network whose job it is to help local volunteers to better understand their obligations around safeguarding and better understand how they can make their clubs safer and more welcoming. It is also cultural. We are working with the Leadership Skills Foundation to understand those barriers. If you are a young person or from a black or Asian background, or if you are disabled or you are a woman rather than a man, you are far less likely to volunteer. Why is that? What can we do to change that in the context of sport? How do we make it part of our obligations as a national body on the organisations that we fund? One of the things that I think will become more of a focus for us in supporting national governing bodies is that the money that we provide for them should be in part about how they are supporting their volunteer base more effectively.

Will you continue to fund the welfare officer programme?

Yes. I think it is crucial. It is one of the things that came out of the Whyte review into gymnastics. It was a seminal moment for sport at both elite and community level to have such an in-depth inquiry into what went wrong that so many people had such a bad experience in one sport. The lessons that came out of it pertain to sport as a whole. One of the key findings of the Whyte review for gymnastics is very applicable, which is the gap between the national governing body and the local clubs in safeguarding. There was lots of information, but there was no human connection or interaction. By investing in regional welfare officers, we have created a network of people whose job it is, regionally, to think about the local clubs, what they need and how they can help them. I sincerely hope that it is a fundamental part of what we are collectively doing to provide for safer sport.

You touched on this when you were talking about safeguarding, but when we think about the training that volunteers need to go through, the DBS checks and all those things, which are necessary to improve the environment not just for them but for the people taking part in the activities, is there anything more that we can do to reduce the administrative burden on volunteers so that it is easier for them to become more qualified and have safeguarding checks done?

I think there is a balance to be struck. You are right to point out all the requirements and necessary measures that are in place, but can we make it less burdensome? We are seeking to put in place a professional coaching register so that professional coaches can move more effectively and quickly from one sporting job to another without necessarily having to go through the qualification process again in an individual sport. While it would be a lot more widespread—as I say, over 10 million people every week volunteer—ultimately something like that would be a huge benefit to sport. If you are a volunteer for your local football club who has a DBS check and has been through the safeguarding training, and you want to go and support your local badminton club, not to have to go through the whole process again would be a benefit. It is also about information, support and guidance. One of the best things we can do, apart from ultimately to resource and get out of the way, is help local sports clubs and community groups to know about what they are helping with what they are trying to do. Volunteers give up a huge amount of time. The easier we can make it for them, the better. It is National Volunteer Week this week. There is a newsletter called Buddle for local sports and community groups. This week’s newsletter is all about volunteering and how you can attract people to volunteer: what you can do as a club to retain volunteers, how you can reward them and how you can show the benefit of what they bring. There is quite a lot in this that is softer: it is about how you recognise the role that volunteers play in a local club.

I suppose the national coaching register would be a recommendation that we could look at.

I am certainly happy to supply more information. We are working very closely with our sector partner, CIMSPA, to create an environment where there is a centralised register of professional coaches. It is a positive thing; being disbarred from it is the punishment. You want to be on the register, and it is essentially proof not only that you are qualified to be a specialist in a sport, but that you have the broader skills to enable you to be a coach, such as interaction with people and an understanding of creating a culture and a safe, welcoming environment.

You mentioned Buddle, and obviously it makes complete sense to share as much information for volunteers as possible and make it as easy as possible. Is there anything in the system that you think could be improved or that, after you have moved on, you would like to see the next person in the role adding to?

This is not for Sport England or my successor, but we need a national conversation about the role of the volunteer. It is not just in sport; it is in every other sector as well. How do we value more? If you volunteer in a sports club, can that help you to attain some form of qualification that could help you in finding work? One of the wonderful things about volunteering is the dual benefit: people who volunteer feel happier and healthier themselves, alongside helping others. I would love to see the role of the volunteer recognised in a way that enables people to feel that they are contributing not only to a local club or community organisation, but to their own ability to progress in the world of work.

We have that opportunity through a website database called Active Places. We are trying to understand the facilities space at any given time. I think a national facilities register is one of the things that the previous Government suggested in their strategy. Keeping that live and current would be a challenge, but having that information online could be something to look at. Ultimately, a national strategy for facilities is something that I think everyone who has spoken this morning could see the benefit of. We need to understand the impacts on the planning system, which Robert Sullivan spoke about, the way that gyms and fitness centres are located within new build housing environments, the open spaces that local authorities provide, and the future of public leisure. The way we think about facilities has historically been too bespoke. It needs to be much more about how we embed it in people’s everyday lives and how we make decisions on a facility based on local need. I think that could be supported by a register or some form of national facilities base, but the key thing is the intent to make facilities central to what we are seeking to provide in our local communities. The more we can embed it in wider planning and in the development of housing and other areas, the better. Without that, people are always going to feel that it is discretionary. If it is part of their lives, it will be central to their lives.

That is interesting and useful feedback—thank you. That is an interesting way of thinking about a national picture versus what is happening locally on the ground. I hope part of the answer is to be more locally driven in our decision making, because that is real and it is in the school. We have our current statutory planning function, and one thing we are able to do through that is that, when schools are either enhancing their facilities or providing new facilities, we can negotiate a community use agreement. That has been very positive. We have done about 400 of those in the last three years. There are definitely ways in which we can think more creatively at Sport England about how to enable a pitch that exists behind the school gates, as you say, to be a part of the community. I would welcome that in the context of everything that has been talked about this morning, whether it is funding, the role of the school games organisers locally in providing a connection for schools and local community clubs, or the role of the primary PE and sport premium in providing primary schools with resources to access those facilities. Joining that up is the answer to your question, as well as us being a bit smarter about what constitutes a pitch in a local place.

Ultimately, he is a great example of somebody for whom, if we were working better in place and we were more locally driven in our decision making, there would probably be an easier opportunity to understand how we could overcome the barrier and the challenge that he is facing. At a national level, there is clearly regulation around what is and is not applicable in the pitch strategy and what local authorities are providing. It is a good example of the sense of asset-based community development. What do we have in our local community, and how can we best serve people by enabling them to access it? If that is a pitch that he is privately seeking to provide and he is finding a barrier, hopefully we can overcome it, in Rochdale or wherever.

Thank you so much, Tim. You have used the word “strategy” a lot in this evidence. Have you been surprised about the lack of a sport strategy from the Government?

I think there is a sport strategy, whether it is the historic one of the previous Government or the way in which this current Government are approaching sport. It is coherent in so many of the things that we care about. What I would love is a Government approach to a mission-led role of sport and physical activity. If you think about health, safer streets and ultimately the economic growth of this nation, sport and physical activity can play such a role. That is perhaps the area where I want to see more focus.

As you head off on your new adventures, is there a final message that you would like to leave us with, as we are bringing our report to its conclusion?

First, I welcome the fact of this inquiry. I think it is timely, given all the things that are going on and changing. I hope that there has been a general consensus that the sector is seeking to work collectively and collaboratively better than ever before; that there is an understanding that place matters more than anything else; and that there can be a better use of resources if we join up around some key outcomes. The only other thing I will say, after everything I have said this morning—I genuinely feel passionate about this—is that ultimately sport’s role in our community is far more fundamental than just the opportunity to be active and to improve your physical and mental health. Sport’s role is fundamental. Sport is part of our DNA and the fabric of our nation. As we saw during the pandemic, when clubs are no longer there to serve their communities, they are missed. When we are celebrating success at the elite level, we have a sense of national identity and pride that few other things can bring. Perhaps my message is that, in thinking about the mechanics of local grassroots sports and community and school sport, we should also think about the wonderful benefit that can flow and the happier and healthier lives that come as a result.

Thank you very much. That brings us to the end of our session. Thank you for the work you have done at Sport England. We wish you the best of luck in your new role.

Thank you very much indeed.