Sport England hopes for cash fix

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Sport England is negotiating with the DCMS and NOF to run a joint programme which will provide the struggling distributor with an immediate boost of up to £100m to ease its cash-flow problems.

The two distributors are trying to devise an appropriate programme that brings sport and leisure together to emphasise community health and fitness outcomes. NOF is said to be insistent that any new programme should reflect its priorities of being cross-cutting, and involving health, education and community dimensions. It is anxious to avoid the impression that it is a merchant bank for the lottery, able to bail out other distributors in times of crisis.

Sport England’s crisis continues, however, as its board once more deferred the decision to unfreeze its lottery grant-making when it met on 2 June. Chief executive Roger Draper is confident that the July meeting will produce a better outcome, saying: ‘We want to move very quickly now, we are hoping by mid-July to have turned the corner.’ Until then, 230 projects approved by Sport England continue to await their fate. In the six months since the lottery funding freeze began, it is possible that some of these projects have fallen apart because of the funding uncertainty. Others will be in for bad news: Sport England has been reviewing every project to see if it fits with the organisation’s new priorities, and Draper says that one in five projects may have their funding commitment withdrawn, creating £30m of breathing space for the distributor. It needs it, with £480m of committed cash going out this year, and £160m of income, which is forecast to drop to £150m for each of the next two years.

Draper says that turning the sporting ‘supertanker’ around is bound to take time and the modernisation process now being spearheaded by himself and the new chair, Patrick Carter, is not yet complete. But negotiations over a short-term cash injection are clearly a large part of the reason for delay. ‘We are in discussions with the government to see if any more investment can be made, lottery or exchequer,’ Draper says. The other reason for deferring decisions is a round of key meetings in mid-June (after Lottery Monitor’s press deadline), at which the Sports Minister, the country sports councils and UK Sport are supposed to be hammering out a plan to restructure and streamline the vast, arcane bureaucracy that governs the running of elite sport in the UK. There have been calls for Sport England to be folded into UK Sport as part of this process, hiving off its community sport functions for NOF to run.

These decisions notwithstanding, Sport England is pressing ahead with its expanded regional structure, and has appointed some heavyweight figures as regional board chairs, including Mary McAnally, former tennis pro and managing director of Meridian Broadcasting (south-east board), and Sir Norman Warner, Chair of the Youth Justice Board and the nearest thing a government has to a Youth Czar (London board). The business backgrounds of several of the chairs is not accidental: Draper says the region operations will not just be ‘doling out money’, but will be expected to earn their keep. He talks of ‘performance-based allocation’ of funds to regions, saying: ‘We’re not setting up nine fiefdoms. Their role is about attracting investment in sport at local level from a wide range of agencies. So their job is leverage.’ This message was driven home by the Culture Secretary speaking at a sport and business conference on June 9. She said: ‘I have set Sport England a challenge.For every £1 we put through the new regional structure, I want them to convince you [the business community] to invest at least £2. … ‘We have changed Sport England.The new regional boards will be led by dynamic individuals who will chair a board of committed professionals from the public and private sectors.Their task is simple – to deliver measurable increases in participation in their area.’