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Sports: Finance

Volume 461: debated on Monday 11 June 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport whether she plans to transfer responsibility and funding of high performance programmes in non-Olympic sports from Sport England to UK Sport. (142031)

While the Government keep under review the roles and responsibilities of the public agencies for sport, there are no immediate plans to transfer responsibility and funding of high performance programmes in non-Olympic sports from Sport England to UK Sport.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much funding has been awarded by Sport England for high performance programmes in non-Olympic sports in each of the last three years, broken down by sport. (142033)

Prior to April 2005, national governing bodies were awarded funding by Sport England specifically to support their World Class Performance programmes. The following awards were made to non-Olympic sports for the period April 2004 to March 2005:

Sport

Funding awarded (£)

England and Wales Cricket Board

2,000,000

English Golf Union

450,000

English Ladies' Golf Association

513,000

English Karate Governing Body

531,905

England Netball

1,529,430

British Orienteering Federation

304,000

Rugby Football League

1,500,000

Rugby Football Union

1,000,000

Rugby Football Union for Women

1,397,671

England Squash

772,800

British Water Ski

176,589

Since April 2005, Sport England has awarded funding to non-Olympic sports to support the delivery of their four-year strategic plans and has not ring-fenced funding for high performance programmes within the overall allocation per sport per plan. National governing bodies apply the funding they receive to deliver against a range of key performance indicators (KPIs). Sport England has said that it is not, therefore, possible to identify specific funding amounts for high performance programmes.

The exceptions to this are the Football Association and the Lawn Tennis Association, neither of which has any elite-orientated KPIs and apply funding devolved to them through their whole sport plans solely to grassroots and development activities.