Sport England freezes grant-making

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Sport England has frozen all new lottery grant-giving pending a ‘stock-take’ of its resources and commitments. The announcement was made in mid-December, as the incoming Chair, Patrick Carter, disbanded Sport England’s decision-making lottery panel with immediate effect. The processing of already-approved grants is apparently unaffected, but no more new awards are to be made until the new regional structure is up and running, the new business plan is finalised, a new grants management system is in place and projections have been done on future lottery spending. Sport England is by a long way the most over-committed of the lottery distributors; at last September its spending promises exceeded its lottery balances by £345m, and it believes its lottery income may drop next year to £170m. 

Sport England did, however, get a pre-Christmas windfall of £60m of Treasury funding, to be divided up among the national governing bodies, which should go some way to pacifying their opposition to the council’s shifting role.

The DCMS has appointed seven of the nine new regional board chairs, but accepts that it is running a bit late on Sport England’s deadline of April 1 for its switch to regional grant-making.