Sport England pledges £195m of coronavirus funding to communities

Sport England has made £195m of funding available to help the sport and physical activity sector through the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

The package, which is a combination of National Lottery and government funding, is made up of the following:

• A £20m Community Emergency Fund, which will be opened immediately for clubs and community organisations to bid into. Grants between £300 and £10,000 are available
• A £5m pot for existing partners to bid into if they’re facing specific financial difficulty
• An additional £55m to support our sector during an ongoing period of restrictions, to fund new and innovative ways to keep people active and, when the period of restrictions is over, to help organisations get back to business and adjust to a different environment
• A £115m rollover of current funding into 2021/22 to give long term certainty to over 100 well established partners who play a vital role in the delivery of sport and physical activity in England.

Alongside this, given cashflow concerns in the sector, they have also agreed to consider requests to release six months of the coming year’s funding (50% of awards) to partners, meaning additional funding will be available sooner.

The package follows Sport England’s recent decision to offer major flexibilities to those who currently receive funding – including the ability to change timings, key performance indicators, targets and conditions, and redirect money to new activity in response to coronavirus.

Sport England chief executive Tim Hollingsworth said he hoped the package would help the sector get through these ‘extremely challenging times.’

He said: ‘Sporting events are being cancelled, gyms and leisure centres are closed, clubs and community groups are not operating, and children and young people are all at home.

‘This is impacting the sector financially in a significant way, although it is heartening to see huge amounts of innovation and agility, with many operators getting classes online in a matter of days to enable home workouts for example.

‘As the body responsible for the growth of sport and physical activity at a grassroots level, we have an important role to play both in ensuring that we support those with short term cashflow concerns and immediate loss of income, as well as those facing medium and long term survival challenges and financial difficulties.

‘We want the sector not just to come through this crisis but to be in a position to thrive again in the future and this package will ease the pressure on a huge number of the organisations who are central to that.’