TOUCHING BASE
Surviving the cuts in funding for sport
How is the sector bearing up? Is it all doom and gloom, or might some positives come out of the budget slashing? Kath Hudson asks four industry experts
Chief Leisure Officers Association’s (CLOA) impact survey in 2011 indicated that one third of authorities were planning savings of 30 per cent across culture and sport ser- vices over two financial years. Sports development and leisure facil-
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used to prop up other services. When Link4Life took over as a leisure trust in 2007, the
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local authority had 800 members and direct debits of £250,000 a year. This has been raised to 12,000 members and £3m direct debits a year, as we have attracted users from private sector facilities. We’re having to be creative: we’ve announced a col-
laboration with Oldham Leisure Trust so we can share knowledge and have extra weight to apply for funding together as the health budget changes. As a trust, we are also looking at other services which we could run, for ex- ample the youth service and adult social care as we could deliver cost savings by spreading overheads. My main concern with the cuts is that for a short-term
fix we are storing up long-term problems and in two years we will unravel all the many years of good work. Shiny new sports centres don’t address all health in- equalities and it’s those pathways that are having to be shut down.
ity operations are bearing the brunt. At a time when there is an increased
ast year was an extremely tough year for local authority leisure, with the speed and severity of the cuts being unprecedented. The
awareness of the need to address health inequalities, the less efficient off-peak hours are being squeezed and fund- ing pulled on many initiatives aimed at reaching special populations. Services are being rationalised, hours
reduced and facilities closed, or handed over to the community to run. Staff have been made redundant and posts left un- filled when people have left. The immediate future doesn’t look heartening either: more cuts will be
implemented this year and public spend- ing is set to be reduced by a further 0.9 per cent in real terms in 2015/16 and 2016/17. However, looking for the silver lining,
adversity does breed creativity, and some local authorities and trusts are pro-actively seeking partnerships, acting collabora- tively and looking for ways to tap into healthcare funding when it is reformed. Although there will be many casualties of the cuts, hopefully there will be a few phoenixes rising from the ashes too.
CRAIG MCATEER managing director Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust
t’s been a difficult time, however income and growth are up. We’ve invested in three new sports centres which are returning healthy profits and are being
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RICHARD HUNT chair CLOA
reating a joined-up approach for community sport in the current climate is essential. Shared approaches will be critical to maintaining a local sporting infra-
structure and many authorities are already illustrating this, through asset transfer to community sports clubs, joint facility sports hubs and a focus on enhancing sustainable community use of school sports facilities. Sport England’s strategy to create a sporting habit for life will only succeed in driving up participation if it is part of a whole system approach, led locally. There are two strands to joining up from a local au-
thority perspective: across the community sports sector itself, and for the council to share broader agendas with partners in public health, crime reduction partnerships, children’s services and adult care commissioners. However, the sector does have some windows of oppor-
tunity. The transition of public health responsibilities to local government and health reforms present the oppor- tunity to significantly raise the profile of and investment in sport and physical activity. Local leadership will mean working collectively with key sector players in our sport and physical activity networks to make this case.
22 Read Sports Management online
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Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012
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