Written evidence submitted by the Sport Legacy Foundation

The Sport Legacy Foundation (SLF) was founded by Lord Richard Newby OBE and Mrs Jane Power as the legacy programme for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 in the West Indies.  Known then as Sport for Life International (SFLI), the charity is now a Charity Commission CIO which runs the SFLI coaching programme alongside its newly branded Building Character through Sport (BCtS) programme in the UK and the Caribbean.

With a background in politics, sport and in particular combining sport and education at The Prince’s Trust, the charity’s founders established SLF to provide unique coaching programmes to improve young people’s lives through sport and education. SLF is proud to work with national governing bodies of sport to provide grassroots coaching in schools and the community as well as after-school multi-sport to education academies.

Community sport

1. The current quality and availability of facilities for grassroots sport are in our opinion poor in the two areas where SLF coaches football, cricket and tennis, being Birmingham and Bradford Leeds.

Quality:

-          We consider that government needs to partner with national, local government and sport governing bodies to pro-actively bring areas close to schools and communities in less advantaged areas (IMD 1-2/3) to life. 

-          By this we mean current plots of land, both brownfield and greenfield, should be improved to produce and build indoor facilities coupled with outdoor facilities and close to new housing builds using Section 106 and other finance.

-          Many football and cricket grounds/pitches are now suffering from flooding, especially in Birmingham and the West Midlands but also in Bradford Leeds, see the Guardian article by Tanya Aldred 8th Jan 2025 ‘Deep, minging, unpleasant’: cricket’s flooding problem is getting worse’ depicting Worcestershire’s cricket ground completely submerged.  This happens frequently at our football grounds in Yardley where we have delivered SFLI coaching and games for ten years.  No clubs will now come and pay to play for the season but on the other hand we have had planning permission turned down for sports and housing improvements.

-          Cricket is also not well provided for in both Birmingham (East) and Bradford Leeds although the ECB’s new indoor centre in Bradford is helping to provide for the local largely Asian British community.  We need such an indoor centre in Birmingham (East) so that keen players can practise all year round.  Our community is diverse and families and young people from Asian British and Caribbean British communities find it difficult to identify good and safe places to play.

-          Tennis is not even on offer in Birmingham (East) or even mid-city due to the LTA’s good attempts at Parks provision having been delayed we understand.  It means that when we coach year-round in schools in the same area under the excellent LTA Tennis Foundation grant provision, we are unable to refer young people or their communities to

Facilities where they can practise tennis or play with friends or family. Clubs are also few and far between.  This applies even more to Bradford Leeds where we struggle to find any tennis courts at all apart  from on private schools’ land.

2. What sources of funding are available for grassroots sport and are they sufficient?

-          Some sources of funding are available from Sport England, National Governing Bodies, National Lottery, Postcode Lottery and some others.

-          We do not consider them sufficient given the challenges facing thousands of young people in inner city areas to be active and more healthy, both physically and mentally.

-          Funds can be distributed more effectively, and application processes be improved by:

• Acceptance of certain charities, including our own and many others too, that have been delivering year round sports coaching for more than fifteen years in England & Wales, the Caribbean and Pakistan, so acceptance of our programme funding should be straightforward along with Charity Commission information.
• The same applies to application processes.
• The LTA Tennis Foundation has a process for example that is easy to follow.  Once they have processed your charity, its income and its trustees, you work closely together to achieve their aims, reporting processes are six monthly, we collect data on their  behalf, reactions from the young people to tennis and provide media stories.  We find this to be an ideal example of how to work with grassroots charities such as ours.

3. How can volunteers be better supported and what is needed to attract and retain more volunteers to grassroots sport?

-          We feel it would be useful to train volunteers properly so that they can add skills to their existing knowledge bases.

-          In the first instance not to overload them with too onerous roles.

-          Make them feel part of a family (Commonwealth Game Birmingham 2022 was excellent at this)

-          Also, provide benefits where at all possible, tickets to live sports events, invitations to other events e.g. dinners, media opportunities, invite them to tell their stories too possibly on podcasts.

4. How can grassroots sport be made more engaging and accessible to under-represented groups?

-          They can be presented as inclusive sports.

-          The thousands of questionnaires we have received back from students over the years (based on the Sport England Easy Read Participant questionnaires) always emphasise the same points:

• The coaches need to be kind
• The coaches need to be ideally from their community
• The activity needs to be fun
• The activity needs to make the young people feel happy

• The activity needs to help them feel more connected to their local community
• Also to try new things, be more active, be more confident

-          In December 2024, feedback from 80 secondary school girls who completed a 27 week 1.5 hour per week tennis programme we delivered at two Core Education Foundation academies in Birmingham in 2024 said this (the below is verbatim):

• “The teachers and staff (from SLF) are amazing and I’ve learned how to play tennis; it was fun, we had laughs and I learned a lot of things like the back hand shot, smash and more!; it helped me learn new skills, it is nice and the people are friendly; the coaches are good and supporting and also funny – I was happy to participate in it.”
• Asked to rate coaches out of 10 we had 9/10 in one group of 20, 10/10 in another and 4 x 1 million, 1000 billion and 100 billion in another group!

-          This positive feedback has led to a renewal of the programme at a further school in the Core Education Foundation group in Birmigham.

Governance

8. How effective are national and local government and sport governing body initiatives in delivering school and grassroots sport and how might they be improved?

- As far as grassroots sport is concerned, we believe that some national governing body initiatives are excellent and some less so.  For example, the LTA Tennis Foundation has adopted a welcoming, open and effective grant scheme which we find straightforward to work with, attractive to the highly diverse communities with whom we work and easy to report back on. We have not thus far found it so easy to work with football governing bodies, who may it is possible be oversubscribed but who have rejected reasonable applications for grant funding in the past.  Likewise, cricket governing bodies have not been easy to work with in the past but are changing positively and their emphasis now on diverse communities and women and girls more engaging.

- We believe that the LTA Tennis Foundation could improve their initiatives by helping us to improve and develop indoor facilities and places to play so that we can take our young players to the next level of their tennis journeys in Birmingham and Bradford Leeds.

- With F.A. football, it would be to make themselves more accessible especially through locally based global brands such as Aston Villa F.C. and Birmingham City F.C. but also the Football Foundation and Birmingham County F.A.  and by that we mean funding, assistance and inclusion.

- With ECB cricket, help us to attract all communities in both cities especially women and girls by developing indoor centres so that cricket can be played all year round in a fun environment but also respecting those local communities in each city.  Respect for local communities has been well documented in our cities as an area requiring improvement.

9. How can the Government facilitate better coordination across the sport ecosystem to deliver grassroots and school sport:

- is the Dept for Culture, Media and Sport successfully leveraging the economic and community benefits of sport and physical activity across Government?

- From an economic point of view, DCMS has influence on all aspects of sport and physical activity and its ability to improve British people’s lives.  This  means highlighting and emphasising its value to everyone by ensuring that global sports events are held in the UK which inspire and provide enjoyment to so many, cf the 2012 Olympics, the 2022 Commonwealth Games.  This also means that those events provide the basis of funding, both public and private sector, that will trickle down to grassroots sport, enable facilities and programmes to be formed and change young people’s lives and those of their communities for ever.  Whether more of this funding can reach grassroots communities in future is, we are sure, under careful consideration. 

We appreciate that the high-level discussions which take place are often not fully understood by the general public but fully support government’s efforts in this area.

From a community aspect, our feeling is that there are many levels between DCMS and ourselves at grassroots level and this is therefore a difficult question to answer.  Present DCMS  leaders have been in position only since July 2024 and it is hoped that they will use the power they have to influence all aspects from safeguarding to health to the importance of sport and physical activity in education, both in schools and in the community. 

One of the aspects of our work is developing our education tool Building Character through Sport with the University of Birmingham, whose next schools conference is at Birmingham City F.C.’s ground 11th March 2025.  It is hoped that the findings of this conference which is attended by more than 300 teachers and heads from top schools in England & Wales will influence the importance of sport in education and in the community.

We hope that this has been helpful and would be happy to feed back any other views from our experience in grassroots sport in future.

Jane S Power, CEO, SLF   10th January 2025