GPA0003
Written evidence submitted by The Local Government Association
Dear Ms Hillier,
Grassroots participation in sport and physical activity
The Local Government Association (LGA), as the national voice of local government, welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Committee on grassroots participation in sport and physical activity.
Public sport and leisure services and facilities play a vital role in supporting participation in community and grassroots sports, as well as wider opportunities to engage in leisure activities and get active. Councils in England are currently the biggest funder of sport and leisure services and facilities. When combined with parks and green spaces, councils currently spend over £1.1 billion a year and are responsible for 2727 leisure centres; a majority of the UK’s 27,000 parks; 31 per cent of grass pitches; 33 per cent of all swimming pools (this 33 per cent accounts for the majority of publicly accessible pools); 20 per cent of health and fitness facilities and 13 per cent of sports halls.
Council sport and leisure services provide a unique offer, supporting affordable, universal and targeted services, and activities, that are simply not provided for elsewhere at such scale. Council funded services provide the facilities, pitches and parks that are relied upon by grassroots clubs, elite athletes, schools, the NHS for cancer rehabilitation and social prescribing programmes and performance sports such as swimming. Public facilities often provide free or discounted membership to those members of the community who may not otherwise be able to afford access to activities, whether the unemployed, families on low incomes, veterans, or disabled residents.
In addition to the provision of facilities, councils also strive to offer a range of opportunities for communities to be physically active in different ways. This includes outreach services and initiatives which engage communities in the places that feel comfortable, such as facilitating play streets, providing outdoor gyms in parks and active travel opportunities. Many councils also provide specialist support for local community sports clubs – including support with development, volunteering and safeguarding - and performance sport, especially swimming and diving but also other sports such as athletics, tennis, and rugby. There is no statutory requirement for councils to provide these services but they do so on a discretionary basis because they recognise the significant value of these services and infrastructure to their communities.
Our joint report with the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) and Chief Cultural and Leisure Officers Association (CLOA) ‘Securing the future of public leisure services (2021), which was based on an extensive survey of council and operators, showed councils have a unanimous desire to provide quality leisure services and increase their contribution to broader social objectives (97 per cent of respondents). 86 per cent of respondents said health and wellbeing is the most important driver for providing leisure centres, followed by tackling inequalities as the second most important.
However, the report also highlighted the growing financial pressures facing the sector and the need for increased national investment to make facilities and services sustainable. Since then, the situation has deteriorated. A Ukactive survey of the sector in June this year found that 79 per cent of public leisure facilities say they will cease operation within six months without further support with costs. In June 2021, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee highlighted that grassroots clubs were already struggling to afford and secure access to space in existing facilities. A series of closures of public leisure facilities will make it even harder for grassroots and community sports clubs to operate. It also risks undermining the ambitions of Sport England’s 10-Year strategy and councils’ objectives to tackle inequalities and improve the lives our communities through sport and activity.
Financial pressures on public leisure facilities and services
Councils receive no dedicated funding from government to provide sports and leisure services and facilities. Prior to the pandemic, the sector had to deliver significant budget reductions due to overall reductions in local government’s core funding, which resulted in a shift of focus to parts of the service which can generate income. While funding was stretched, services in most areas prior to the pandemic were largely self-sustaining in their day-to-day operations, and sometimes generated income that could be invested in other public services. However, there were significant challenges in generating adequate capital investment. Research by Sport England prior to COVID-19 showed that nearly two thirds of leisure facilities are more than 10 years old and require refurbishment, and nearly a quarter of all sports halls and swimming pools have not been refurbished in more than 20 years. Many of these older properties are at immediate risk of closure and replacing them could cost in the region of £1.5 billion further down the line.
Subsequently the pandemic has had a critical and destabilising impact on both councils’ and leisure providers’ finances. While the government provided a significant amount financial support for the sector through the National Leisure Recovery Fund, the quantum of funding provided covered a small proportion of the losses providers and councils incurred during lockdown closures and periods of reduced footfall. Many councils used their own funds to save facilities from closure and provided £159 million emergency funding in total, while leisure providers contributed £144 million from their reserves (based on estimates by Sport England from the data collected as part of the evaluation of the National Leisure Recovery Fund). With many providers having used up their reserves, operators are therefore significantly more financially vulnerable going into the current energy crisis.
Although recovery rates vary across the country, operators are beginning to see a positive return to leisure centres with some reporting 70 per cent recovery rates compared to 2019/20 participation levels. However, footfall is still below pre-COVID levels, which has implications for the sustainability of some services. The rising cost of living pressures on households are now likely to adversely impact participation rates, as people inevitably look to cut back on costs, with more deprived communities and rural communities being disproportionately affected.
An already financially fragile leisure sector is now being hit hard by rising energy costs. Figures from ukactive reveal that the total energy bill for the leisure sector has risen from £500 million in 2019 to between £1–£1.2 billion for this year. Based on energy prices in April 2022, we forecast that for a council with four leisure sites, this price increase could result in between £70,000 and £130,000 in additional energy costs per month which councils and operators cannot cover. This will have since increased.
Leisure and sports facilities, especially swimming pools, have particularly high energy demands, making them particularly vulnerable to price increases. As many facilities are past their replacement date, they are also highly energy inefficient and for some councils, leisure facilities account for up to 40 per cent of their overall direct carbon emissions. Many councils are prioritising decarbonising their facilities to deliver efficiencies, including building new ultra-low carbon facilities. Exeter City Council’s Passivhaus leisure centre is one example of this. However, these measures require significant investment and do not address immediate pressures across the sector. Current government funding streams, such as the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund, also focus on retrofitting buildings and are therefore unsuited to much of the leisure estate which needs replacing to meet communities’ needs now and in the future.
Leisure operators are trying to mitigate the costs, but they are unable to budget forecast for gas and electricity costs because the price is fluctuating. For contracts that contain inbuilt energy benchmarking, the predicted figures are insufficient when compared to the cost in real terms. Operators on a fixed price contract have some short-term protection, but the risks to operators and councils are being stored up for when the fixed element ends, reportedly to be in the autumn for many. Councils are reluctant to pass costs on to customers, to protect access for low-income households, many of whom are already reducing visits and losing access to the health and wellbeing benefits that accrue from being active. Therefore, tough decisions are having to be made about which facilities need to be closed. As ageing facilities are often located in areas with higher levels of deprivation, closures could impact these communities most.
Along with sporting partners like Ukactive, we have called for discussion of the following options for offsetting these immediate financial pressures:
• In-year grant with an increase to the local government settlement from 2023/24 to ringfence and protect public leisure facilities
• Immediate review of sector taxation and regulation that minimises other outgoing costs, with longer-term business tax reform to collectively support the sustainability and growth of the sector.
• Support for a move to non-carbon intensive heating methods including existing capital funding programmes to be opened up to ensure that new build facilities are eligible for support, improving energy efficiency for the future while also ensuring they meet the needs and expectations of future communities, encouraging them to be active.
Councils’ funding pressures
Meanwhile, councils continue to face growing financial and service pressures. LGA analysis suggests that local government’s cost pressures are £2.4 billion higher in 2022/23 than they were when councils were planning their 2022/23 budgets in autumn last year. Moreover, there is a funding gap of £4.5 billion in 2024/25, which will be further exacerbated by the forecasted increase in the National Living Wage (NLW) which could cost councils at least an additional £400 million over the next two years. These costs simply cannot be recouped by council tax alone, particularly given the cost-of-living crisis. As higher proportions of council budgets are absorbed by statutory and frontline services, such as social care, councils’ ability to maintain investment in sport and leisure is increasingly under pressure. Any staff reductions will disproportionately affect young people, in a sector where 45 per cent of the paid workforce are aged between 16-24, and 21 per cent are aged between 25-34.
Impact of funding pressures on grassroots participation in sport
The DCMS Select Committee’s 2021 report, ‘Sport in our communities,’ highlighted that grassroots clubs were struggling to afford and secure access to space in existing public leisure facilities, which offer more affordable access than private alternatives. This was supported by research from Sheffield Hallam University which found that 77 per cent of the grassroots sports clubs they questioned said that the biggest limiting factor for people taking part is access to public leisure centre facilities. The potential closure of further public facilities due to current pressures is therefore likely to be a hugely detrimental to our ambition to increase participation in grassroots sport and support communities to become more physically active.
Leisure services run on low margins in order to ensure inclusivity and accessibility, particularly for disadvantaged communities. However, we have received significant anecdotal information from councils and providers that the impact of energy price rises, on top of long-standing financial and funding pressures, is now reaching a point where it is driving decisions about closing facilities or reducing opening hours. A more comprehensive survey is being conducted by sector partners, including drawing on data from the Moving Communities platform.
Historically councils public sport and leisure services have responded innovatively to reductions in their core funding by developing new sources of income from commercialising some of the ‘products’ such as charged-for fitness classes or cafes, in addition to creating efficiencies. Such income has been necessary to cross-subsidise not-for-profit parts of the service, helping to for example subsidise hall hire costs for local sports clubs. However, there is now limited scope to drive further savings or income generation, without passing on costs to residents or closing non-income generating services. Our 2021 survey of councils found that as councils are forced to close services, it is worryingly the ‘added social value’ activities – social prescribing activities, targeted outreach at less active groups, and discounts for community or grassroots clubs – are likely to be cut as services focus on their income generating activities (which is based predominantly on the provision of gym equipment) to secure the overall financial viability of the service.
Although the focus of this submission has been on leisure facilities, which are used by the majority of people to be active, we are critically aware that those parts of the community with lower activity levels, including various ethnic and minority groups, women, and those with disabilities, are more effectively engaged and supported through bespoke outreach offers, enabling them to be active in a way that suits them. However, both general funding cuts to councils and the level of financial challenges facing the asset-based offer, has meant that these type of outreach offers have been most squeezed and reduced in many areas. While we must protect our core facility infrastructure, it is equally important that we continue to try and help all parts of our community to be active, including those who will benefit the most in terms of health gains. However, given the current funding pressures, this is increasing unachievable, despite councils’ best attempts and Sport England’s local delivery pilots which have provided valuable learning.
Councils also continue to work with community groups who are interested in taking over and running facilities themselves, with the Government’s Community Ownership Fund providing support for this work. However, these facilities are themselves facing the same challenges of rising energy costs and a reduction in people’s ability to pay or donate to keep the facility running. Equally challenging is the fact that much of the leisure estate is in poor repair, and it is not reasonable to transfer a facility requiring significant refurbishment to a community group.
Impact on wider social and economic objectives
Public sport and leisure services are a part of the social infrastructure of the nation. They support work to tackle loneliness and health inequalities. They bring communities together, promote healthier lifestyles and contribute a wealth of social value such as reducing crime and improving educational attainment. They are relied upon by everyone, from people who want to be more active, to grassroots clubs and elite athletes training to compete nationally and internationally including our future Olympians and Paralympians. Charities like the RNLI also use them to train lifeguards during the winter months, and they are a crucial delivery partner for schools meeting their statutory obligation for children to be able to swim 25 metres. Significantly, public sport and leisure services are often the only choice for people living in deprived areas, and our research recognises that much more should and can be done to reach more diverse communities and help to address inequalities in access.
Sport and leisure services contribute to a range of outcomes beyond the immediate benefits of increased physical activity and improving health and wellbeing. These include tackling health inequalities and reducing the burden on the NHS and social care, increasing community pride and cohesion, creating strong local economies, and offering the potential to meet net zero targets through the decarbonisation of the leisure estate. Independent research on the social and economic value of sport undertaken by Sheffield Hallam University estimates that community sport and activity generate £85.5 billion of social and economic value in England. This equates to a return on investment of £3.91 for every £1 spent.
There is clear evidence that regular physical activity reduces the risk of serious illness and disease, particularly amongst those most exposed to health inequalities. Analysis from Sport England suggests that physical activity results in healthcare savings of £5.2 billion in healthcare savings, and £1.7 billion in social care savings. The NHS directly relies on leisure facilities to provide exercise on referral schemes, social prescribing activities and rehabilitation services, with 66 per cent of cancer rehabilitation taking place in leisure facilities. Councils are also actively working to maximise the preventative contribution of their sport and leisure offer to local public health, with many councils combining their public health portfolios with culture and leisure. Research by the District Councils Network demonstrates that 94 per cent of councils’ leisure centres had been utilised in schemes to tackle health inequalities over the last 5 years.
However, to fully utilise the potential of these services to communities’ health and wellbeing, the way public sport and leisure services are viewed and utilised by national and local partners needs to urgently change. Our research shows that 63 per cent of health, wellbeing and physical activity programmes are commissioned by public health, of which 44 per cent is commissioned by the council and just under 40 per cent commissioned by the NHS. While this demonstrates there is considerable existing work taking place, there is not a consistent picture across the UK and there is low awareness and communication within health services locally and nationally of the opportunities public sport and leisure services make to preventing ill health and reducing the burden on the NHS and social care services. Councils recognise that much more could be achieved with more joined-up leadership, co-ordination and vision for these vital services.
Achieving this will require more coordination between Government departments, their agencies and local government. The LGA has been calling on the Department of Health and Social Care and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities should take responsibility for embedding the strategic role of public leisure facilities within health systems and pathways, coordinating with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC), and local government within England. Working to integrate more closely with health systems will help councils to build on existing work and deliver increased social prescribing opportunities, GP referral programmes and wider community development programmes. This will be vital to ensure that work to meet national objectives to increase grassroots participation in sport, are joined-up with wider place-based social, health and economic objectives to achieve better outcomes for communities and value for money across public services.
Urgent support for public support and leisure
Urgent support is needed to secure the long-term sustainability of public sport and leisure services and ensure that every community, including grassroots sports clubs, has access to affordable, quality services. This must comprise a combination of immediate revenue support to prevent market failure in the face of rising energy costs, plus longer-term access to capital funding to accelerate the transformation of the estate into an energy-efficient, sustainable service that will meet the needs of communities for years to come. The sector has developed innovative and practical solutions to the energy challenge – it now needs support to roll this out at pace.
It remains a key challenge that at the national level there is not a clear home for public sport and leisure services. They currently straddle the DCMS and the DLUHC, but they clearly have an impact on the policy objectives of Department for Work and Pensions, (DWP), Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). A lack of ownership for strategic policy for sport and health outcomes at a national level causes challenges for councils and local partners when seeking to join up these initiatives in their local places, but also in securing national funding. Councils are proud to deliver these services for their communities but could do more and better if Government departments worked collectively and actively with us as a strategic partner and investor.
It would therefore be helpful for DCMS and DLUHC to accelerate their work in partnership with local government to build a robust case for the sustainable long-term investment in public sport and leisure services. This will need to include discussion of how to prioritise short-term investments to protect those facilities most at risk in deprived communities where there is little to no chance of alternative private sector provision stepping in. Given the pressing need for significant repairs facing much of the leisure estate, it is also likely that there will need to be rationalisation of what is on offer, with some communities potentially having to travel further to access support to be active.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on behalf of councils on the challenges currently facing leisure services and the impact for participation in grassroots sport and physical activity. I hope the information we have outlined above is helpful for your upcoming evidence session. If we can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to get in touch (megan.edwards@local.gov.uk).
August 2022