Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Recommendation 3
Fourth Report - Sport in our communities
Published 29 Jul 2021
Paragraph 20
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Sport in our communities All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Year on year, we continue to see persistent gaps in activity levels between different demographics. This issue has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and certain groups in society continue to be disproportionately impacted. We acknowledge the support provided through Sport England’s ‘Tackling Inequalities Fund’ but support must be focused, as a matter of priority, on ensuring that activity levels among, in particular, women, disabled people and people from a BAME background recover and improve in the long-term. We recommend that the Government reconsider our previous recommendation to ring-fence further funds to ensure that the progress that was being made in physical activity levels within these groups is not set back by Covid-19, both by encouraging participation and by attracting leaders and volunteers from a range of communities and backgrounds across the UK.
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Fourth Report - Sport in our communities (HC 45), paragraph 20, 29 July 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 20 October 2021 (deadline 18 October 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government "wholeheartedly agrees" on the need to support community and grassroots sport, and responds to the recommendations by agreeing with their intent or aims in most cases while declining some specific measures.
- On a 'Work Out to Help Out' campaign, it agrees with the intent but says "We do not think that a financial incentive to ‘work out’ is needed", preferring investment in community facilities and existing campaigns.
- It agrees that funding models should be reviewed to ensure sustainability, and will reflect on this in the new sport strategy, while noting it does not allow funding to sports Arms Length Bodies to be "in advance of need".
- On the Community Ownership Fund, it says "purchasing and upgrading sport clubs’ own facilities is out of scope", though up to £1 million matched funding is available "in exceptional cases" for community-owned sports clubs or grounds.
- It states that organisations will be expected to publish diversity and inclusion action plans "by the end of summer 2022", and that funding withdrawal will be "actively considered" if sustained lack of progress is evident.