20
Accepted
Sport England sought to rebalance its grant funding towards the inactive in line with the...
Conclusion
Sport England sought to rebalance its grant funding towards the inactive in line with the objectives of its 2016–2021 strategy. Sport England distributed £1.5 billion in grants in the five years starting 2016–17, supporting a range of organisations from National Governing Bodies to local community sports clubs. While Sport England can identify programme-specific spend, its data were not sufficiently granular to fully track its spending and it cannot identity how the grants it had issued to national organisations were distributed geographically across the country. The NAO therefore found that Sport England only knows which local authorities this funding went to for £450 million of this spending.33
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the conclusion, stating Sport England will take action to build on existing investment data and will seek to capture more granular data on the locations where beneficiaries reside. Sport England will also endeavour to provide appropriate detail in its 2023-24 Annual Report and Accounts on how investments are targeting deprived and less active communities.
Government Response
Accepted
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: October 2024 5.2 Sport England will take appropriate action to build on the substantial investment data already published and recorded its Annual Report and Accounts to date. 5.3 Sport England invests public money responsibly and transparently, recording and publishing data on all grant recipients – including location data down to postcode level. Sport England publishes an updated register of grant awards on a quarterly basis, with awards dating back to 2009 listed in full. 5.4 These records demonstrate Sport England’s commitment to providing funding to deprived communities, as 19.2% of local level investment from July 2021 to June 2022 has been for projects in Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 1 areas. 5.5 Sport England will continue to provide a breakdown of where National Lottery and Exchequer funding is invested on a quarterly basis. 5.6 In some cases, where funding supports the delivery of activity across a local authority area, counties or regions, Sport England does not currently capture the range of locations where beneficiaries may reside but will seek to capture these data moving forward. 5.7 Sport England will endeavour to set out appropriate detail in their 2023-24 Annual Report and Accounts and explain how investments are being targeted at deprived and less active communities.
Source
Committee
Public Accounts Committee
Report
Thirty-Second Report - Grassroots participation in sport and physical activity
08 Jan 2023
HC 46
Addressee Bodies
HM Treasury
Timeline
Recommendation age
3.6 yrs
Report published
08 Jan 2023