News Sport Wales’ vision Inclusivity and sustainability top priorities for Sport Wales
Sport Wales have published their vision for improving the inclusivity and sustainability of sporting facilities throughout the nation.
Facilities for Future Generations: A Blueprint for Sport and Active Recreation in Wales lays out a framework as a point of reference to “help inform long-term, sustainable decision-making” on the design, provision and maintenance of facilities.
Headlines from the report include the recommendation for a 25 year plan to create a “long-term approach” to facilities provision, and a local government review for all its current and planned provisions, including schools, colleges/universities, private and voluntary sector facilities.
Local government will be encouraged to integrate sporting infrastructure plans within wider estate strategies. A nationally coordinated review of aquatic facilities should also be undertaken according to the document.
The document said that while there had been “significant growth” in leisure infrastructure over the past forty years, the “maintenance and modernisation of extant stock has tended to be less a priority”, highlighting
... and staying in Wales
“deteriorating infrastructure across the public sector becoming increasingly commonplace”.
Sport Wales and the government also recommend the development of national and regional sports infrastructure plans, increased surveys and evidence gathering in relation to facilities’ role in participation, and efficiency performance measures “geared towards profitability, quality of infrastructure and impact on activity habits”.
“We know that having high quality, sustainable facilities will be central to encouraging more people to become active more often,” said deputy director of community sport at Sport Wales, Graham Williams. “In order to achieve this, there must be a long-term approach to planning so we can be sure that facilities fully satisfy community needs, both now and
Funding should be rebalanced
Sport England funding should be rebalanced in favour of local initiatives, says LGA
Sport England funding should be rebalanced in favour of locally-led organisations and away from national governing bodies (NGBs), according to the Local Government Association (LGA).
In its submission to the consultation on the Government’s Sporting Future sport strategy, the LGA said that councils and their local partners were “well placed to lead a step-change in sports participation rates that will improve the nation’s physical and mental wellbeing”.
“Not only are councils the biggest public sector investor in sport and physical activity, spending £1.4bn
8 I PC APRIL/MAY 2016
per year, but their understanding of communities enables them to target opportunities and encourage mass participation,” said the submission.
“The LGA would like to see a rebalancing of funding from national interventions to a more local one, with councils of all types able to access as many funding programmes as possible with the flexibility to develop locally led solutions to tackle inactivity.”
According to the body - which is recognised as the voice of local government - councils were able to bring schools, voluntary sports clubs, NGBs, health and the private
Sport England CEO Jennie Price
sector together to create partnerships which could achieve some of the objectives of Sporting Future.
In addition, the LGA said that councils and County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) were “best placed” to coordinate locally-led sport and physical activity delivery, but recognised the need to review the system.
“There are a number of CSPs that are hosted by councils and these arrangements have generally worked well,” said the LGA.
“However, in some areas CSPs and councils do not appear to be working as well as they could do and the review provides an opportunity to examine where CSPs and councils work well together and the reasons for this and where they do not.
“The review also provides an opportunity to examine the working relationships between CSPs, Sport England and councils who do not have sport or physical activity development officers.”
in the future.”
He added: “We must make high quality first experiences a key priority which is why getting it right at school level is so important, alongside focusing on developing facilities that maintain that enthusiasm for sport at school age into adulthood.”
Deputy minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Ken Skates, said that while it was a “challenging financial time” it was important to “make sure future generations have the right facilities in the right places, so that we can break down barriers to participation”.
The Wales Office has revealed its ambition for the nation to attract “top-class” global sporting events - reiterating its desire to see a Commonwealth Games bid.
Talking at a Government reception to mark Welsh sporting success, Wales Office minister Alun Cairns said that, while the nation was “riding on a wave of sporting success”, there was “no better time to identify how we can attract more global sporting occasions to our shores”, specifically pinpointing the Commonwealth Games.
Last year, a bid to stage the 2026 Games was ruled out after the Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones deemed the cost as “too prohibitive”, suggesting that the national government would not help fund the event.
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