How do we move Towards an Active Nation?

The future framework

Sport England have today published their new strategy for 2017-21. This strategy outlines Sport England’s plan in detail to take forward many of the actions and priorities identified in Sporting Future published late last year as well as clarifying how and where its remit is changing. The Ministerial foreword sets the tone for the strategy – this is not ‘more of the same’ or tinkering with an existing plan. This is a significantly different plan and framework, with a much clearer focus on tackling the huge issue of inactivity.

The Sport England remit is changing in the following key ways:

·         Focusing much more on inactivity – with 25% of funds going specifically into this area. This is where, rightly, Sport England point out that the social and economic gains are the greatest.

·         Expanding the remit to work with children over the age of 5 instead of 14 – this is something that we have previously called for and strongly support and we welcome the recognition that this needs to be coordinated with what is offered in schools – a point made strongly by us and many of our members in the consultation.

·         Continue to invest in those who are already active, but to a lesser extent over time with efforts to drive sustainability and self-sufficiency.

·         “Putting customers at the heart of what we do” with a strong focus on those groups who currently under-participate.

·         Building capacity in the sector to service digital expectations and needs.

·         Working to foster strong local collaborations and partnerships.

·         Working with new partners including more organisations from the private and charitable sectors.

·         Investing more in innovation (20% of Sport England funds will go into this area). Obviously we will await more detail here but this looks like an exciting opportunity.

The strategy outlines in some detail both the new investment principles and investment programmes. We are expecting more detailed investment criteria to come later this month, but a number of key drivers in the strategy to inform your thinking are already emerging. Organisations across the breadth of our membership should be thinking now about what they already do across these areas, where they have potential to do more and how best they can measure and articulate their impact.

In thinking about these questions, a starter for 10 from me in terms of some of those likely areas:

1.       Much more focus on inactivity – where does your organisation fit with this?

2.       More frequent reviews of where investment works (with the potential for it to increase) and where it doesn’t – how would you respond to that?

3.       A new focus for Sport England in working harder to broker new relationships – what cross sector relationships do you have, and which new relationships do you need help creating?

4.       The use of behaviour change as the key model and framework for tackling inactivity – and making investment choices to support that.

5.       Working with a key new group – children over 5 – where are your strengths and potential for development here?

6.       Volunteers – rather than seeing volunteers as a key part of the delivery mechanism, what do you do (or could you do) to support volunteer development and to diversify your volunteer workforce.

7.       Working more closely with health commissioners and explicitly in the health area – how good is your data in this area at the moment?

8.       Supporting the existing and core market – how might you make this offer sustainable with declining public funding over time?

9.       Workforce and coaches – what is your plan for building a fit for the future workforce to deliver the safe, quality offer that many new people coming into sport and physical activity will need?

10.   Governance – what steps are you likely to need to take to not only comply with the new unified code, but to develop best practice?

There is of course much more, and the strategy presents a number of significant opportunities. I would now encourage you to read the strategy. We will be producing a more in depth review of the strategy of the review tomorrow, and we will be working closely with our members in the coming months. Specifically we will be looking to:

1.       Gather your views to identify common issues and challenges to feed these back to Sport England – the Sports Summit next week with Jennie Price speaking is the first major opportunity to do that.

2.       Identify areas where we would need more detail or where we think there could be more focus and investment – or areas that we feel are missing.

3.       Develop our services to members and the wider sector in light of the new challenges we will face.

4.       Continue to develop our Fit for the Future programme so members can take better advantage of opportunities.

5.       Work specifically with Sport England to deliver solutions around shared services for the sport and recreation sector.

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