Recommendation 11

Under its previous strategy, Sport England agreed with the Department three numeric targets to increase activity levels among women, lower socio-economic groups and the population as a whole.16 As part of its 2021 Strategy, published in January 2021, it committed to developing key performance measure to monitor progress against its activities. These measures were not yet in place, so we asked Sport England how it would be able to tell whether its efforts had been a success. Sport England told us that it needed to complete discussions with the Department on “the exact suite of measures that we are going to use” but that it had not finalised these given that the Department was developing a new strategy.17 Sport England said it was looking at what were the best indicators of overall population change and the conditions for success that sit beneath that, which it was conscious that it would also need to meet if it was going to fulfil its ambition to tackle inequality. We pressed Sport England on when it would finalise its performance 12 Qq 29–30; C&AG’s report, paras 10, 2.2, Figure 9 13 C&AG’s report, para 8 14 Qq 32, 39, 44, 58; C&AG’s Report para 14 15 Q 30 16 C&AG’s report, para 2.3 17 Q 63 12 Grassroots participation in sport and physical activity measures. It told us that it could not finalise these until the Department had published its new strategy, but that it expected to be able to put the measures in place “quite quickly” afterwards.18