Grassroots participation in sports and physical activity

The Department should set out how it will lead delivery of the objectives and outcomes for sport and physical activity that it shares with other departments. The Department should clarify its plans for leading and influencing cross-government efforts designed to sustain its objectives and ensure better whole-system working. This should include, for example, establishing with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities how to tackle the challenges facing public sector facilities.

The Department should set out how it will measure the success of its forthcoming strategy. Elements
should include: the measures and milestones by which the Department will track progress and its social and economic return, plans for regular monitoring of delivery against these at programme and strategic level, and a comparison of different programmes to identify their relative effectiveness and the lessons for long-term impact. Sport England should publish a similar framework for its 2021 Uniting the Movement strategy

The Department should clarify whether and how major sporting events will deliver increased participation in sport and physical activity when bidding to host such events. If no such legacy is planned, the Department should articulate clearly the other benefits it expects such events to deliver. Any expectations the Department sets to deliver a physical activity and sporting legacy should be matched by proper arrangements for funding, monitoring and evaluating progress after the event

Sport England should check that its distribution of funding supports its objective to target lower socio-economic groups. Given Sport England?s aim to reach lower socio-economic groups as part of its objective to tackle inactivity, it should review whether its mechanisms for allocation and distribution of funding fully support this aim.

Sport England should exploit its networks to identify and share findings, themes and learning from its work that could accelerate greater collaboration across the sector. Sport England should use its insight from its research and evaluation, including its learning from the COVID-19 pandemic, to highlight common challenges
whereby organisations it funds can learn from each other, such as approaches to reaching deprived communities and tackling inequality.

Sport England should set out how it will reach organisations it has not previously funded to support
its objectives. Sport England expanded its reach during the COVID-19 pandemic to fund new organisations. It should apply what it has learned from this to ensure that awareness of its activities and associated funding are accessible to organisations it may not previously have reached.