Thirty-Second Report - Grassroots participation in sport and physical activity

Sport England has not yet translated its understanding of the barriers to participation into action to enable inactive groups to participate in sport and physical activity. Sport England recognises three key requirements to get inactive groups to participate: motivation, confidence … Read more Sport England has not yet translated its understanding of the barriers to participation into action to enable inactive groups to participate in sport and physical activity. Sport England recognises three key requirements to get inactive groups to participate: motivation, confidence and opportunity. It recognises that some groups face greater barriers to participating in sport and physical activity, including women, lower socio-economic groups and disabled people. Sport England set itself targets to increase activity levels between 2016 and 2020 for women aged 16–60 by 250,000 and lower socio-economic groups in targeted communities by 100,000. Immediately prior to the pandemic, it was on track to deliver against its target for lower socio-economic groups, but significantly off track on its women’s target. Among inactive groups which did not have targets, activity levels among the over-75s and disabled people increased before the pandemic, but there was no such increase in activity levels within Black or Asian ethnicity groups. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some of the existing inequalities in activity for the least affluent, Asian people and disabled people. Sport England accepts that its past work on addressing barriers has over-relied on creating opportunities to participate, through a focus on building facilities and opening up clubs, incorrectly assuming this would be enough to generate activity. Sport England says that its new strategy looks at how to build people’s confidence and motivation, but it did not provide us with any concrete examples of what this looks like in practice. Recommendation 4: Sport England should, by June 2023, write to us with details of the barriers for the least active groups, and what action it is taking to address them to ensure people have the motivation, confidence and opportunity to participate in physical activity. Show less

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On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (the Department) and Sport England on their efforts to increase the population’s levels of physical activity.1

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Prior to the pandemic, between November 2016 and November 2019, the percentage of adults who were active increased by 1.2 percentage points, from 62.1% to 63.3%. Participation rates then fell to 61.4% in the year to November 2021, the lowest on record, as measures to control the spread of the …

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In 2015, the Department published a new cross-government sporting strategy, Sporting Future. The strategy promised to target funding at less active groups of the population, believing this would deliver the biggest gains for public spending.13 Sport England told us that, since 2015, it had adopted a variety of approaches to …

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