Sport England Strategy - A Briefing for Alliance Members

1. A clear line of sight to the objectives in Sporting Future 

2. Ensure investment benefits under-represented groups 

3. Use behaviour change to make investment choices 

4. Get maximum value from all Sport England’s resources, not just our cash 

5. Strike a balance between ‘bankers’ and ‘innovators’  

6. Review our investment portfolio regularly and remove funding if an investment is failing  

7. Encouraging increased efficiency  

• Create a common evaluation framework for all proposals and investments. These will be based on the investment principles above.  

• Create new and wider partnerships over the next four years and work with more traditional partners, conditional on meeting the basic standards laid out in the forthcoming Governance Code for Sport.  

• Sport England will play an active role in brokering these arrangements, and will offer active support to funders by contributing insight, advice and support.  

1.Tackling Inactivity  

• Create a new, dedicated fund of £120 million to tackle inactivity over the next four years. 

• Ensure that at least 25% (c£265 million) of their total investment over the next four years directly benefits inactive people. 

• Work with Public Health England to develop clear messages on the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines on physical activity and deliver a national sport and physical activity training programme to primary healthcare professionals. 

• Develop a collaborative programme of work with leading health charities to get more people with long-term conditions taking part in physical activity. 

2. Children and Young People 

• Make a major new investment of £40 million into projects which offer new opportunities for families with children to get active and play sport together. 

• Offer specialist training to at least two teachers in every secondary school in England by 2020. 

• Improve the experience that children get in school through our work to support the effective use of the recently doubled Primary PE and Sport Premium funding and our investment into the School Games. 

• Supporting satellite clubs and exploring the new Government investment into extending the school day and breakfast clubs. 

• Recognise the importance of transitions between both primary and secondary and then to further and higher education. 

3. Volunteering 

• Create a new volunteering strategy in November 2016 and include in its objectives increasing the number of people who volunteer & increasing volunteer diversity. 

• Ensure the new strategy includes: 

• Improving digital information on volunteering opportunities 

• Matching service to local clubs 

• A reward system for volunteers 

• Prioritise the motivations and needs of volunteers. 

• Encourage new thinking about volunteering, valuing short as well as long-term engagement. 

• Increase support for Sport England’s Club Matters resource. 

• Make £30 million available to support implementation. 

4. Taking sport and activity into the mass market 

• Identify and back innovations that offer clear potential for growth at scale. 

• Experiment with new ways of investing e.g. taking equity stakes or using loan & profit share arrangements. 

• Encourage others to invest and innovate in markets with the greatest potential by making insight freely available & requiring funders to share their data. 

• Continue to invest in national level campaigning. 

• Ensure Active Lives can test the strength of respondents’ habits not just their immediate behaviour. 

5. Supporting sport’s core market 

• Provide insight, advice and funding to those who deliver to regular players, focusing on customer needs and delivering excellent experiences. 

• Invest approximately 29% of their available budget to support sport’s core market. 

• Recognise the key role NGBs play in supporting people who already play regularly, and work collaboratively with them to find more sustainable models to support them. 

• Help those organisations who receive substantial amounts of public funding to become more sustainable. 

• Revise Commercial Framework to help organisations reduce the levels of public funding through finding alternative sources of private investment. 

6. Local delivery 

• Invest at least £130 million over the next four years in 10 places in England to develop and implement local strategies for physical activity and sport. They will be a mix of urban and rural areas. 

• Focus on addressing inactivity & unrepresented groups in these areas 

• Offer dedicated, senior level support in each area 

• Ensure that rigorous evaluation and the creation of new insight is a high priority 

• Ensure that successful delivery models are promoted and publicised 

7. Facilities 

• Sport England’s investment strategy will concentrate on two areas: 

• A strategic capital programme for large, often multi-sport facilities; 

• Replace Inspired Facilities with a new Community Asset Fund offering grants of up to £150k.  

• Sport England will also develop a single customer-facing quality standard for all facilities.