Community Sport Facilities

11:00:00

I will call Andy MacNae to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.

I beg to move, That this House has considered community sport facilities. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I am grateful for the Minister’s attendance today, and for all the work that she and the Government are doing to champion community sports facilities. I and many colleagues believe that easily accessible sports facilities have a huge untapped potential to contribute not just to the vibrancy of communities, but to the missions that the Government have set out to achieve. To deliver on that, we need to align funding and partnerships with need, opportunity and impact. As a non-statutory service, local leisure provision has been disproportionately hit by years of austerity. That is especially true in the case of smaller local authorities, which lack the capacity and resilience to mitigate the cuts. The impact is particularly felt in our small towns, where hollowed-out local services amplify the feeling of being left behind. Young people in small towns rightly say, “There is nothing here for us to do,” looking with envy towards distant big towns and cities and asking, “Why do they always seem to get the money?” In this debate I will argue that we must have an approach to sports and leisure that properly values the benefits of active lives while addressing the increasing inequality of provision and being agile enough to respond to opportunity when it comes. I will start by considering the wide-ranging benefits and impacts in support of our missions. First, well-tailored sports programmes centred around local facilities can help to drive economic growth and unlock opportunity. We know that sport builds confidence and resilience in young people, equipping them for work and helping them to break down the barriers to opportunity. If we want to see the next generation thrive, they need the confidence to seize the opportunities before them. Regular sports and physical activity provide an excellent way of embedding that confidence while growing teamwork and leadership skills. The Youth Sport Trust has provided strong evidence for that, demonstrating that sport is a key predictor of children’s self-confidence and resilience, with girls receiving an even greater positive impact from sports than boys. The trust finds that the economic value of providing physical activity in primary schools alone is worth at least £4 billion under the Treasury’s wellbeing measures, but the economic benefits of physical activity through improving health, wellbeing and resilience are doubled for children who are either disabled or receiving free school meals. In addition, sports can provide strong and unique incentives for people to continue coming to school. RugbyWorks supports young people excluded from mainstream education; its term-time programme offers participation in key stage 3 and key stage 4, with a year-long intervention underpinned by the four pillars of its theory of change, including developing life skills, raising aspirations, improving physical wellbeing and focusing on mental wellbeing.

I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate. He is absolutely right to set the scene very clearly for community sports facilities. Obesity seems to be rising in the United Kingdom. Does he feel that access to sporting facilities would reduce obesity? Rural bus connections to the community centres are also part of the issue, because if people cannot get there, the centres will not be much good to anybody.

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. That is a hugely important point. Connectivity and accessibility of local facilities are vital. That is the point I am making about small towns that feel cut off—not only do they not have the facilities themselves, but they are unable to get to facilities in the towns nearby. It is a crucial part of the mix, and of course young people are particularly reliant on bus services to get to those sorts of opportunities. The RugbyWorks programme can be delivered as a preventive programme in a mainstream setting, or with children in alternative provision who have been excluded from school. Some 89% of programme graduates progressed into sustained education, employment or training. For young people in alternative provision, the national average is just 62%, so that shows a massive impact. Overall, sport can help to engage young people in education and motivate them to gain the confidence and skills that they will need in a growing economy. For those who have fallen out of work, sport can be a route back. We have nearly 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds out of work—a record number, representing nearly one in seven young people. Poor mental health is by far the most commonly cited reason. For each individual, that is a tragedy, because being in work or training, with the potential to learn and progress, is crucial to getting a good start in life; on a societal level, it undermines our economic growth and puts huge pressure on our finances. The cost of poor mental health alone is estimated at £56 billion per year, with the total economic cost of economically inactive 18 to 65-year-olds coming in close to £300 billion a year. If we get a grip on that, we can really start to turn things around. Sport can play a vital role in starting individuals on the route back to work. There are many examples of how that works well, including one close to my home: Rossendale Works is a partnership between Active Lancashire, Rossendale borough council and the Department for Work and Pensions, through the local job centre. The project works with individual suffering from entrenched worklessness and low self-esteem to understand what may be preventing a return to work. It develops a tailored work plan to address those barriers and includes a focus on sport and physical activities to boost confidence, health and wellbeing. Delivered through council leisure facilities, it has proved very effective in inspiring participants, getting them off the streets and work-ready, and reducing demand on local health services. Importantly, there is also a process of job matching and close relationships with local employers with skills needs. The idea is that there is at the very least a guaranteed interview at the end of the process, and support is maintained through the interview and the work placement. Since the project kicked off in 2018, it has supported hundreds of Rossendale residents and has proved really effective at getting them into employment. For instance, 203 people with multiple issues were supported in 2022-23, with 68 getting into employment as a result. Despite that, the project has remained under constant funding pressure. Over the past few years, funding has been predominantly via the shared prosperity fund on a year-by-year basis. The current programme comes to an end this month, with the council seeking a one-year extension. Such continual uncertainty undermines the benefits that a fully secure programme could deliver. Once again, we see a disconnect between funding structures and programme benefits, with small councils such as Rossendale least able to bridge any gaps. Moving on to our health mission, accessible and engaged sports facilities play a crucial role in the health of our communities, preventing and mitigating illnesses and, in doing so, easing the pressure on our NHS. The “Healthy Britain” report, by my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), highlights that obesity alone is estimated to cost the UK economy at least £58 billion a year. The British Heart Foundation estimates the annual cost to the economy of cardiovascular disease at £19 billion. The NHS spends more than £10 billion a year—or 10% of its budget—on diabetes. Sport has a massive potential to address those and other conditions. Even with our current provision, Sport England found that over 600,000 cases of type 2 diabetes, 150,000 cases of heart disease, and 1.3 million cases of depression were prevented through sport in 2023-24. As it stands, it estimates that sport activities provide at least £10 billion of savings for the NHS. Looking specifically at mental health, overall there is a 20% to 30% lower risk of mental illness for those taking part in daily physical activity. In 2019, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report “Changing Lives” noted: “Living Streets reported that 80% of participants on their programme for older people felt less stressed or anxious and 76% felt fitter or healthier as a result, while parkrun told us 95% of people doing free timed runs in their local park said that they felt both healthier and happier and 97% said they felt more positive as a result. Crawley Town Community Foundation used football coaching and other activities to support people experiencing or at risk of experiencing mental health problems, with 78% of participants strongly agreeing that the project had given them a positive activity to focus on.” Similarly, Sport in Mind, a charity that works specifically to support people with mental health issues with regular sport interventions, found that after six months 94% of attendees had improved mental wellbeing, 91% reported higher self-esteem, and 82% showed reduced symptoms of depression. Sport really does work. Overall, for every £1 we invest in sport, we get £4 in return in social and health benefits. That incredible effect led the chief medical officer to note in 2019 that if exercise “were a drug, we would refer to it as a miracle cure”. With better-equipped, more accessible sports facilities and an increase in social prescribing, we have the opportunity to significantly improve the physical and mental health of this nation, boosting our economy and helping the NHS. However, for that to be a true game changer, we must do it at scale and with real ambition. Locally led and well-targeted sport-based interventions could also make our streets safer. The College of Policing has investigated the effect of sport-based intervention programmes, which are often aimed at young people in deprived areas who are at risk of falling into crime, but can also be targeted to support those who are in prison or leaving prison. The combined effect of strong communities, good role models, challenging physical activity and healthy competition has been shown to be effective at lowering crime rates. On average, sports programmes result in an increase in psychological wellbeing for 31% for the cohort and a lower reconviction rate of 14%.

Does my hon. Friend agree that community asset transfers offer a real opportunity for grassroots clubs such as mine in Warrington South, allowing for the enhancement of community facilities while also giving local people a stake in how their clubs are run, putting people over profit and retaining an identity rooted in the community?

I absolutely agree. Of course, communities know best. Communities know what works; local people know what works, and empowering them to get involved in their local sports facilities is a hugely beneficial approach. I will highlight the Sunderland Community Action Group’s “Night Riders” initiative, which specifically targets people in antisocial behaviour hotspots through detached youth workers. In the evenings, kids are taken from hotspot areas to cycling hubs, where they take part in a fun group cycling activity and are given bikes and helmets covered in LED lights. It takes people away from hotspots and puts them in a controlled, safe environment, with good mentors to work with them. We know that sport-based interventions are an excellent way of tackling the causes of crime and antisocial behaviour. Through introducing young people to new experiences and new peer groups, their impact is long-lasting. Again, however, to make a real difference, we must take the best practice, mainstream it and do it at scale. Finally, investment in modern and well-maintained sports facilities, and encouraging people to go cycling and walking, can help us to meet our net zero targets. Older, poorly maintained sports facilities can be difficult both to heat and to run. This is a huge issue, with 63% of sports halls and swimming pools now over 10 years old; indeed, nearly a quarter have not been refurbished in over 20 years. The Local Government Association has also found that leisure facilities produce between 10% and 40% of district and unitary councils’ direct carbon emissions. Inevitably, with those come higher running costs. Investing in modern, well-maintained facilities, ideally with renewable energy generation, is a route to environmental and financial sustainability. Walking or cycling rather than driving to work or school delivers multiple benefits—a key benefit, of course, being reduced emissions and better air quality. Indeed, a University of Oxford study found that those people who switched just one trip per day from car to cycling reduced their carbon footprint by about half a tonne over a year. Yet despite the great potential to support the delivery of such a wide range of benefits, after 14 years of Conservative cuts and the impact of covid, community sports facilities are struggling to survive. Many have been forced to close and many remain at risk of closure. It has been particularly difficult for small councils, without the reserve spending powers or bid capacity of larger councils, to maintain leisure facilities. Despite the best efforts of their officers, it is incredibly difficult to maintain facilities, let alone open new ones. My Rossendale and Darwen constituency is a good example: we have four small towns, with populations ranging from 15,000 to 25,000. The borough council budget is less than £9 million a year. For the past 15 years, there has been some pretty heroic work by council officers, councillors and volunteers to try to keep our leisure facilities open, but despite that work we are now in a situation where two of our four towns have no significant public sector leisure provision. Despite having a clear forward plan to deliver the facilities that we need, along with innovative and high-impact projects, at present the council, with dwindling reserves and myriad cost pressures, has no realistic way of funding it or indeed of match funding any potential capital grants—so we fall ever further behind. Yet the irony is that these are exactly the kind of small-town communities, often lacking opportunity and with serious patches of deprivation, that are most in need of the benefits that local sports and leisure facilities can offer. I am pleased by this Government’s commitment of £123 million for funding to grassroots facilities in the current year and I am sure that we will see equally significant commitments in the future. However, I ask the Minister how we can ensure that we do not leave behind small towns and struggling councils, and how we make sure that we focus support where it is needed, and not just where the voices are loudest or the match funding pockets are deepest. The need to ensure that funding is structured to recognise particular challenges and opportunities in small towns is one part of the equation; responding to opportunity and maximising impact is another. Our country is full of innovative people and local organisations who are keen to get together and make a difference. Our funding structures should embrace this reality and not put up barriers by pretending that central Government know best. I have already given the example Rossendale Works; for seven years now this locally designed programme that has been helping long-term unemployed people into work, yet it has been reduced in ambition and remains reliant on short-term funding. Let me give an equally exciting example in Darwen: a top-class BMX and skatepark facility called Junction 4 Skatepark. Next to it is Darwen Vale high school, which is run by the Aldridge academy trust. Drawing on its experience of delivering the Aldridge Cricket Academy in Brighton, which has delivered excellent academic and sporting outcomes, the trust has come up with an innovative proposal for Britain’s first BMX and skateboard academy. This approach would give students the chance to develop sporting talent and academic qualifications together, rather than having to choose between the two. More broadly, it is a chance to target pupils who have not engaged well with education and are at risk, and to give them a powerful reason for getting positively engaged in school life. At the same time, the skate park has been developing innovative proposals to add media and creative elements to their offer. As well as learning to ride, young people can learn about filming, content development, photography, event organisation and so on—all skills that could lead to excellent careers. The academy trust and skate park are currently working on a business plan to pilot this approach. The only funding gap is likely to be revenue to cover the sports coaching elements, yet as things stand there is no obvious way of addressing it. I ask the Minister to consider how we can support such innovative approaches, responding to opportunity where it comes and mainstreaming what works, and I invite her to visit the facility and see what they can do. The evidence for how sport can positively impact our missions seems crystal clear. Indeed, Chris Boardman would say we are “drowning in evidence”. We have plenty of examples of how to deliver on this potential with local authorities and sporting and community organisations that have initiatives ready to go. Yet under the previous Government, interventions were piecemeal, short-term and small scale, usually subject to competitive bidding and the need to fit with predetermined outcomes. At the same time, community and leisure facilities were closing at an unprecedented rate. That has led to pockets of good practice, constantly under threat of funding running out and with very limited impact nationally. That then leads to a key question. When we have an approach like this one, which is clearly capable of delivering an excellent return on investment and a positive impact that supports the objectives of multiple Departments—such as DWP, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Home Office, as well as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—how do we properly value these benefits? How do we mainstream these programmes at scale, with an appropriate level of support to deliver nationwide impact? How do we ensure that our small towns and left-behind places equally benefit from any such approach? I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has a saying that, “Whatever the problem, sport can be the solution.” We know the benefits and power of sport and physical activity, and its awesome, unarguable return on investment. However, the previous Government let our community facilities wither, leaving young people in small towns like mine with nothing to do and nowhere to go. With our focus on prevention and our commitment to left-behind communities, I hope and believe that our new Government will grasp this opportunity and empower our local authorities, sports clubs and volunteer organisations to put sport back at the heart of our communities.

11:17:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again so swiftly, Sir Jeremy. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) on securing this important debate. I know he has a great interest and passion for this subject, having already met him and discussed it. I will touch on some of his work later in my remarks. Grassroots sports clubs are at the heart of communities up and down the country. They are places where millions of people play sport and get active every week, families share lifelong memories, barriers are broken down and friendships are made. High-quality, inclusive facilities are central to that. This Government are committed to ensuring that every community across the country has access to outstanding community sports facilities. The benefits of being physically active and participating in sport are well known. We know that even relatively small increases in physical activity can contribute to improved health and quality of life, and that it is good for both our physical and mental health. More than that, we know that community sport can play a major role in building confidence and teamwork, supporting life skills for future generations and improving community cohesion. As things stand, not enough people are active or participating in sport. This Government are committed to getting more people active, regardless of their backgrounds, maximising the power of sport to empower diverse local communities. It was great to attend the Football Association’s Made for this Game event in Parliament last week, part of their campaign to empower girls in schools across the country to get involved in sport. I am also looking forward to supporting the FA’s campaign next Friday, closer to home in Barnsley, for their fourth annual Biggest Ever Football Session. These are great examples of grassroots sports being open and accessible for all. To ensure solid foundations, the Government have committed to investment in facilities that support local communities to take part in sport and physical activity, and to a review of the school curriculum that will consider the future of physical education and school sport. The Government’s approach brings in a range of Departments and public sector organisations. Sport has a central role to play in delivering in our missions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen mentioned. The health and the opportunity mission boards are bringing Departments together to ensure that action is taken around preventive health and ensuring that all children have equal opportunity, to support the country to be more physically active. My Department is representing the voice of community sport in these discussions. The public leisure sector plays an important role in the delivery of sport, physical activity and leisure across the country. It does so through vital community assets and infrastructure, such as swimming pools, sports halls, pitches and community spaces. It can help to create a sense of pride in place and improve community cohesion, whether through team sports, gym classes or children’s swimming lessons. We know that it helps to address and prevent long-term health inequalities, both mental and physical. It helps to combat loneliness, grow the local economy and provide jobs and purpose. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen knows that. Today and in previous months, he has made a powerful and passionate case for the important role that high-quality and accessible community facilities can play in his constituency. By securing the debate, he has illustrated his commitment. He works closely with his local councils and takes a keen interest in their ambitions to improve the community facilities for his constituents, as evidenced in the recent sport and physical activity strategy, published by Rossendale borough council. I understand that like other local authorities—including my own—it is facing significant pressures after the past 14 years. I heard my hon. Friend’s thoughts about funding and deprivation. While local authorities are responsible for decisions about sport and leisure provision in their areas, we recognise the challenges they face, especially smaller councils, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out. The Government are taking immediate action to begin to address those challenges by ensuring, in the latest local Government finance settlement, that funding goes to the places that need it most. Overall, the provisional settlement ensured that in core spending power, local government will receive a real-terms increase of about 3.2%, and I am committed to working to support our leisure sector up and down the country. My Department is responsible for the overall approach to sport and leisure provision across the country. We work closely with Sport England, the Government’s arm’s length body for community sport, to invest more than £250 million of national lottery and Government money annually into some of the most deprived areas of the country to help to increase physical activity levels. Sport England has taken a place-based investment approach, working with local authorities and active partnerships, to encourage system-wide change, and we have recently announced plans to extend its work into a further 53 communities across the country to ensure that those in greatest need can be active. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen will agree that it is great to see that his constituency is part of Sport England’s Pennine Lancashire place partnership. That work places the community at the heart of decision making, including those small-town communities that my hon. Friend champions. He gave some great examples and kindly invited me to visit them; I would be delighted to accept. The benefits of investing in community sport and physical activity were brought to life last week, when Sport England announced new figures showing that every £1 spent on community sport and physical activity generates more than £4 for the English economy and society. The Government recognise that high-quality, inclusive facilities help ensure that everyone has access to sport. We will continue to support grassroots sport, including through the multi-sport grassroots facilities programme, which has involved investing £123 million across the UK in this financial year, and which leverages significant funding contributions from both the FA and the premier league. That funding is structured to prioritise areas that need it the most, taking into account local inactivity rates and deprivation. Funding from the multi-sport grassroots facilities programme continues to be invested in England through Sport England and our delivery partner, the Football Foundation, which plan their investment pipeline based on local football facility plans. Those plans have been developed in partnership with local authorities and are in the process of being refreshed to reflect the current landscape. While facilities are no doubt vital for community sport, it is the people who really make the difference. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of volunteers who give up their time, whatever the weather, to make community sport happen. Volunteers are the lifeblood of sport and physical activity. Every day, night and weekend, people can learn, play sport and get active, thanks to others giving up their time to facilitate it. Volunteers are vital to achieving a vibrant and resilient civil society, and sport accounts for more than 50% of all volunteering in the UK. One volunteer creates the capacity for at least eight and a half more people to participate—a fabulous statistic. Volunteering connects communities and is an essential means of supporting grassroots sport. As well as providing the capacity for people to take part in sport, volunteering also benefits the health and wellbeing of volunteers themselves. Sport and physical activity are central to preventive health, and the biggest health gain comes from supporting those who are inactive, or less active, to move more. There is an evidenced direct correlation of increased activity levels in the areas of the country with the highest density of accessible facilities that are safe, inclusive and affordable. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen that we must, therefore, ensure that those facilities exist and are accessible, as a key lever to getting people active and to help in tackling health inequalities. Around 23% of people in Rossendale and Darwen are inactive, and we want to see that figure come down; I know it is higher in my own area of Barnsley. Physical activity interventions contribute an immense saving to the NHS, preventing 900,000 cases of diabetes and 93,000 cases of dementia every year. For publicly accessible sport and leisure facilities, we want to look at the potential to support communities on health needs in particular. We are looking at how co-location between sport and health services could help inactive groups. I recently saw co-location in action in Essex, where local council leaders are working in partnership with Active Essex, local health services and leisure providers to knit services together. They are building strong links between the health and leisure sectors, including by co-locating services so that people have easy access to a wide range of physical activity opportunities. It means that, for example, people with long-term health conditions can access activities that not only improve their physical health but are fun and social. I heard some amazing stories on my visit there. I have also seen the impact of community facilities in my constituency of Barnsley South. Your Space Hoyland, for example, is just up the road from my office and I have visited a number of times. It provides swimming, football, badminton and a range of services that support my constituents. There are multiple examples of similar work around the country. GoodGym is adapting to tackle the increase in isolation and loneliness by offering opportunities to combine physical exercise with volunteering and providing ongoing support to individuals. As the Minister responsible for tackling loneliness, I am keen to see what more the Government can do in this space. I recently held a roundtable with a number of organisations working on loneliness, and I will work to drive further progress in the coming months. My Department will continue to look at ways to support such thinking as we look ahead to future policy around community sport and leisure facilities, as they contribute towards genuinely tackling a range of different issues, whether that be inactivity and inequality, health, or crime and antisocial behaviour, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen. Across all those examples, one thing is clear: having high-quality, safe, affordable facilities is vital. But more importantly, it is the people who make those facilities genuine community hubs, and this Government are committed to ensuring that facilities are built with the community at their heart. We appreciate the huge contribution that publicly accessible sport and leisure facilities make to health and wellbeing. I am hugely passionate about that agenda; I know that being physically active and playing sport is genuinely life-changing. My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen has made an important contribution today, championing his area, and I thank him for that.

I thank the Minister, who has worked a double shift this morning. Question put and agreed to.

11:27:00