What are County Sports Partnerships for?

Posted: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 17:19

What are County Sports Partnerships for?

What are County Sports Partnerships For?

Introduction

What is the purpose of a County Sports Partnership (CSP)? This is a question that I asked myself 3 years ago, when I was asked to become involved with a newly created CSP. The answer did not come as clearly as I assumed it would and especially as there are 40 or more of them and they have been around since the millennium.

In general they were created as hosted organisations, i.e., established as semi-autonomous organisations embedded within County Councils, Local Authorities or Universities and funded primarily by Sport England (SE). Some CSPs map onto one or more geographical counties, or metropolitan areas and some work across aggregated unitary authorities.

Their remit is to create partnerships across sports organisations, support NGBs locally and to coordinate sports activities within their area with the primary role of driving up participation in sport. The headline goals of the membership body, the CSP Network, are by 2020 to get 500,000 more adults participating regularly in sport. To reduce the number of adults that are inactive by 250,000 and to get 1 million young people more active. They are supported financially by SE who works with them for local delivery of centrally devised programmes.

Background

Benchmarking a number of the CSPs identifies very different directions of travel from a similar starting point. Some have left their original hosting arrangement to become independent incorporated organisations; usually as a company limited by guarantee (CLG), registered as a charity and these now constitutes about a third of the original number of CSPs. This also represents a direction of travel for some more. Others had become virtually embedded as departments of the original host local authority e.g., within a county council and some have developed half way arrangements, retaining the advantages of being hosted and with a charitable or trading arm.

Evolving role

CSPs have responded well to changing needs and broaden their offer and sources of income, by engaging with the physical activity and health agenda and with social change programmes, where sport for development has been used as an engagement tool with those disadvantaged elements of communities.

The financial constraints on local authorities and a drive for continuous improvement and efficiency improvements has initiated some 'drains-up' reviews of activities and sources of funding. It is probably true to say that this has been more a tactical review of operations, rather than a strategic review of purpose and ultimately ambition. The latter is critical to building a sustainable organisation when combined with a long term move towards independence and incorporated status and away from hosting arrangements.

The Government's need to address the serious financial and health implications of obesity, dementia, diabetes and other chronic diseases, for which sport and physical activity are recognised preventatives and treatments, would suggest that CSPs may have a key role to play in delivering the remedies. At first sight their local insight and experience in the design, commissioning and delivery of sport and physical activity programme would suggest that they are best placed to respond to this need.

This is happening or is happening very slowly and not to the degree where it is recognised by funding agencies as a core purpose of a CSP. The reasons for this would appear to be a threefold. Firstly, a perception that CSPs are just about 'sport' and the sporting. Secondly, a natural conservatism and reluctance on behalf of the medical profession to engage with other than conventional remedies and finally, but most importantly, a lack of intent at Government level to bring together those agencies – Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), public health and sport and physical activity who could make an immediate and effective difference to the health of communities.

Sport England has been very supportive of CSPs where local initiatives deliver both increases in sport participation and also improve community health. However, there is only a very limited amount of impact that CSPs can have upon the epidemic of chronic diseases confronting the Country, when funded this way. They are ideally placed to do much more and it is difficult to think of any other agency with the local insight, technical skills and experience better placed to do so.

Future core purpose

If the core purpose of CSPs is to be to drive up participation in sport and physical activity and to help mitigate the rising epidemic of obesity, dementia, diabetes and other chronic diseases, then this will require a mind-set change of approach in the agencies involved and with support CSPs can make a difference to these health outcomes.

Sport England, local authorities and voluntary organisations cannot reasonably be expected to provide CSPs with the funds needed to support the physical activity programmes that will materially affect the health issues mentioned. This requires strategic health improvement funding.

Next steps

Public health has undergone major changes in the last few years with the objective of delivering a coordinated approach to public health issues across counties. Responsibility for determining what health support is required has been passed to the CCGs and CSPs have worked hard to engage with CCGs and Public Health bodies locally to provide the health programmes that the CCGs and Public Health require. This has resulted in at best some mixed outcomes. If CSPs, Public Health and CCGs are to work together more effectively to affect the health issues described, there are organisational, funding, mind-set and cultural issues to be overcome and to understand how each can contribute to delivering the desired outcomes. The imperative to work more closely together has to come from the funding Government departments.

The situational weakness for CSPs in this trio of organisations is that they do not have a formal strategic purpose and role to delivery physical activity remedies for community health improvements. The irony is that more than most they do have the insights, skills, local relationships and ability to do so.

The recently published Public Health England document 'Everybody Active, Everyday' should be used as the catalyst to bring together the various agencies and to determine how each can contribute to bringing about the health improvement being sought. If this is to happen then the purpose of CSPs to increase participation in sport and physical activity for health improvement reasons needs to be recognised across government departments.

John Bolan, Chair of Get Berkshire Active CSP

Tags: Local Government, Sport, community sport, school sport

Comments

No comments yet, why not be the first?

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.