“Sport for All” in a financial crisis: survival and adaptation in competing organisational models of local authority sport services

Abstract

Based on research undertaken by the author for the Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE), this paper assesses local authority sport services in England in the context of an economic recession since 2008, the election of a coalition government in 2010 and subsequent reductions in local government finance. The study took the form of a review of secondary sources, a nationwide online survey of heads of local council sport services (n = 95) and a series of follow-up interviews with senior local authority personnel and sector representatives (n = 55). The paper focuses on one theme to emerge from the study, namely, the relative decline of Sport for All, that is, of strategies designed to increase sport and physical activity among the general population. The study found that competing organisational models of sport services across England largely determine the retention or curtailment of Sport for All programmes. In the “ensuring council” model, sport services retain the core capacity to shape and deliver services in an increasingly fragmented mixed local economy of provision. However, models that favour extending private or voluntary and community sector management pose significant challenges for councils seeking to retain Sport for All as a policy objective and as a set of specific practices.

Keywords:

• Sport for All
• sport policy
• local government
• economic recession
• the ensuring council
• management models

Notes

1. The APSE report covered “sport and recreation” which, in terms of facilities and services, covers formal indoor and outdoor sport facilities and programmes, including the management of parks and foreshores, but not cultural or social community facilities. Sport for All, as used here, is not confined to formal/organised sport but includes informal physically active recreation such as walking and jogging in leisure time.

2. While the APSE study was undertaken for England only, much of national-level sport-related policy has been developed for the UK as a whole. It is only in recent years that sport policy has been devolved to Scottish and Welsh assemblies.

3. The Private Finance Initiative is an instrument for establishing public–private partnerships via funding public infrastructure projects with private capital.