WIREDGOV

Today Sport England set out its plans for future investment in six key sports - basketball, tennis, swimming, table tennis, squash and fencing.

The plans illustrate a new, tougher approach to ensuring that millions of people across the country who play sport, and the volunteers who support them, get the maximum impact from Sport England’s investments. 

Taking a new ‘mixed economy’ approach to delivery of basketball, Sport England is increasing the overall investment earmarked for this sport, committing an additional £2.3 million between 2013 and 2017. This is in recognition of its wide appeal to young people and its ethnically diverse participation base. However, Sport England is not confident in England Basketball’s ability to increase the numbers of people playing the sport, so has reduced its investment into the national governing body (NGB). At the same time it will invest in other providers including the British Basketball League Foundation and Reach and Teach in a bid to strengthen the marketplace and support alternative ways to get more people playing basketball.

Sport England Chief Executive, Jennie Price, says: “There are some tough messages here for national governing bodies. If they don’t grow participation we will reduce their funding, and we won’t make long term investments until we have confidence in their ability to deliver.

“This is exemplified by our new approach to basketball: increasing our investment to over £9 million, but reducing our reliance on the national governing body and investing more in community organisations with a strong track record of local delivery.”

Minister for Sport Helen Grant said: “I want to see more people playing sport regularly and enjoying all the positive benefits that brings. So it is completely right that Sport England does not shirk from taking some tough decisions on how public money is spent. I am encouraged that many sport governing bodies are upping their game to increase participation and we must not forget that 1.5 million more people are playing regular sport than in 2005, when we won the right to host the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But the message to underperforming sports governing bodies is clear – if you can’t deliver, then funding will be taken away and given to projects and people that can.”

Over the last year the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has made good progress, embracing change and putting itself in a better position to deliver improvements in participation over the next year. However, they are not yet delivering at scale and the number of for 16 – 25 years olds playing tennis decreased in the last participation survey, so Sport England is reducing funding for programmes for this age group by 20 per cent over the next year, and investing directly into a pilot project to boost park court usage.

Around half of Sport England’s grant funding goes to specialist and local groups rather than to governing bodies, and  today’s announcement includes a significant £6 million award to national sports charity StreetGames to continue delivering its Doorstep Sport Clubs programme. This funding is in addition to £3.38 million invested in 2013/14 and is recognition of the good progress the organisation has made over the last year, reaching its target of setting up 307 clubs and getting more young people from disadvantaged communities into sport.

Further details about the future funding agreements for the six sports can be found here.