Sport England Matt Hugo & Jordan Brown

What are their main Objectives? Protect Existing Facilities: Sport England aims to help protect sports and recreational buildings and land, including playing fields. (Protect Playing Fields) They aim to enhance or redevelop the facilities as part of the redevelopment process. Enhance the quality, accessibility and management of existing facilities: Sport England aims to see the best use made of existing sports facilities through improving their quality, access and management. An example of this is schools allowing community clubs to use their facilities. Provide new facilities to meet demand: Sport England aims to ensure that communities have access to high quality sports facilities that are fit for purpose. They help to guide investment into new facilities and the expansion of existing ones to meet new demands that cannot be met by existing provision. They invest and aim to improve the number of people playing sport regularly, keep them playing, and improve talent development. Maintain people playing sport between the ages of 14 and 25. Enhance the link between community clubs and schools. They aim to increase participation in the groups that are more discriminated within sport, such as; people with disabilities and women.

How do they support people at the Grass Roots’ level? They provide a clear pathway from Grass Roots to the Elite Pathway through the Talent Identification Programmes. Developing opportunities beyond school so that young people can move from school sport to community sport (Foundation to the Participation stage on the Development Continuum) Sport England will ensure that talent identification systems are linked closely with elite-development programmes to ensure each performer reaches their potential They will ensure that they receive the very best coaching available by working with Sport Coach UK and NGBs.

How do they deliver their main objectives? Firstly, they protect existing facilities by funding many grounds, through the ‘Protect Playing Fields’ plan. Sport England are investing £15 million into maintaining community sport fields, such as; Rugby pitches, cricket pitches and football pitches. They aim to maintain and improve performer numbers between the ages of This is done through NGBs Whole Sport Plan by creating new games within a sport to keep the people interested, such as; Last Man Stands. They also aim to achieve this by offering a community-school link, which allows the use of school facilities to the community clubs who don’t have the use of facilities elsewhere. A three-year plan by the FA, alongside Sport England aims to develop new facilities and current facilities. Targets within the Facilities Strategy include improving 3,000 natural pitches across England, building 150 artificial pitches and developing 100 all-weather surfaces while refurbishing changing rooms and toilets on a range of selected sites. Sport England have ensured that every part of the £150 million Places People Play legacy programme works for disabled sportsmen and women. Sport England also work with NGBs to ensure a high level participation from people with disabilities, such as their Whole Sport Plan. They also work with Partners, such as; The English Federation of Disability Sport. One example of a sport involving more women is British Cycling's Breeze programme.

Talent Identification Programmes More than £83 million of Sport England’s whole sport plan funding will be used to support the development of talented young athletes, ensuring that they receive the best possible coaching access meaningful competition and high-quality facilities. As well as investing in 43 different sports, they provide the following support: Continued guidance for a number of sports to help them more clearly define and articulate their talent pathway Technical advice on the provision of talent development to a number of the larger sports including cycling, cricket, rugby league, tennis, netball, squash, badminton, rugby union (women and girls), football (women and girls) Effective England Talent Pathway frameworks Seminars and workshops for Talent Development personnel to ensure effective collaboration and sharing between sports Help to strengthen and develop the coaching team for each sport's England Talent Pathway Sport England work closely with UK Sport, the organisation responsible for elite sport, to ensure that our approach and talent investment fits in with their Olympic and Paralympic World Class programmes.

Provision of Facilities The facilities planning model. The FPM is a computer model, this helps to assess the strategic provision of community sports facilities. The work has concentrated on the major community sports facilities of sports halls, swimming pools, synthetic turf pitches & indoor bowls centres. The model has been developed as a means of: Assessing requirements for different types of community sports facilities on a local, regional or national scale Helping local authorities determine an adequate level of sports facility provision to meet their local needs Testing ‘what if’ scenario’s in provision and changes in demand, this includes testing the impact of opening, relocating and closing facilities and the impact population changes would have on the needs of the sports facilities. In its simplistic from, the model is a supply / demand analysis. It estimates how much demand for a facility there is within an area, it calculates how much supply of that facility there is within the area, and then puts these two factors together to show how much demand is met, not met, and how much supply is used and not used, taking into account how far people are prepared to travel to a facility.

Resources and Coaching Funding opportunities for coaching Three out of every four coaches are volunteers, but the cost of gaining a coaching qualification need not be a barrier. Many clubs pay the course fees for their coaches, while there are plenty of local bursary schemes available. Sport England make these opportunities for free coaching known for anyone wanting to become a coach. Sports coach UK runs the Gillette Great Start programme each year to help new coaches gain qualifications. Anyone can apply through the Facebook page. Improving your coaching Sport England believe Good coaches never stop learning – by watching others, from the internet and from a wide range of opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD). They make Short workshops available and allow you to meet coaches from other sports to share ideas.

Funding The funding programmes Each of the funds have been carefully designed to support the strategy and meet the needs of the applicants. The funds are distributed in two ways. 1.Through solicited applications – they will invest in organisations which have specific objectives related to community sport, such as national governing bodies, county sports partnerships and local authorities. 2.Through open applications - through open applications, they will invest in a wide range of organisations. Applications will be judged on their merits against transparent and relevant criteria.