SPORTS ANALYSIS
How the CSR will affect sport John Goodbody reports on
is an understandable sigh of relief that given the policy of the Coalition to cut the country’s debt sharply and quickly, many areas remained immune to the huge reduction in the money allocated by the Treasury to the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), £1.9bn to £1.1bn. Sport still seems to
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look forward to a future buoyed up with more than adequate resources, munificent even when you compare the money available now, and in the next few years, with, say, that in 1990. Once again, it has been the Nation-
al Lottery that has been the saviour of sport and, in this case, the saving of much embarrassment of the government. Twenty years ago, as Margaret Thatch-
er was resigning as Prime Minister, Colin Moynihan, then Minister for Sport and now chair of the British Olympic Asso- ciation, was asked what major change for sport would result from her depar- ture. He replied with prescience: ”The introduction of a national lottery.” And so it proved. With Exchequer funding being reduced over the next five years, the Lottery can more than make up the short-fall. The reinstatement of 20 per cent in lottery money funding after 2012-13 means that the cash available will either stay the same or even rise. So, Sport England’s projected budget this year is £262m, made up of £134m from the Chancellor and £128m from the Lot- tery. In 2014-15, this will increase to £284 million, consisting of only £86m from the government but £198m from the Lottery. It was always expected that the mon-
ey for the preparation of competitors for the 2012 Olympics would be sacro- sanct because of the public prestige involved in getting medals. However, what wasn’t expected was that similar
Issue 4 2010 © cybertrek 2010
o how was the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) for you? For many in British sport it could have been a lot worse. There
With Exchequer funding being reduced over the next five years, the Lottery can more than make up the short fall
amounts of cash would still be available for the training of leading competitors in successful sports after 2012. Yet UK Sport, which will continue distribut- ing the money after 2012, projects the figures for 2012-13 will be £110m, about the same as 2010-2011. Again, a big thank you to the Lottery. It was also suspected that the Olympic
budget of £9.3bn for the Games and the regeneration of East London, would not be trimmed by much. After all the capital projects are already being built and most contracts finalised. In fact, there has in- deed just been a shaving off the budget. So where’s the bad news? Well, both
Sport England, responsible for the grass- roots, and UK Sport, responsible for the elite, will have to cut their administra- tive costs savagely and some people will clearly lose their jobs as the two merge. The government, however, has ducked the obvious way to make further sav- ings at the top of both organisations and of the DCMS by having direct control of both bodies and ministers chair the rump that’s left. At a time when there’s been such a reduction in the number of
quangos, its curious that Sport England and UK Sport are going to survive as enti- ties, even if many of their highly-qualified staff should remain in such a scenario. The cutbacks on local authorities are
clearly going to affect grassroots sports. Clearly charges for entering swimming pools or sports centres may rise and pro- visions of facilities are bound to decrease. However, the most obvious loser in
the CSR has been the loss of £162m from the budget of the Department for Edu- cation which funded the Youth Sport Trust – responsible for the network of School Sport Partnerships and 501 Sports Colleges. It’s clear that although individual headteachers will be able to continue with a commitment to sport out of their own budget, the money is no longer ring-fenced and headteachers may choose to spend the cash on things other than sport. The task, therefore, is to persuade
those headteachers that money spent on sport is worthwhile, not only for its own sake but also because it helps academic attainment and alleviates social problems. ●
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