Sports Think Tank Director Andy Reed OBE has responded to the new Sport England Strategy.

"We welcome the overall thrust of the document recognising that there is much more to sport of physical activity than participation figures and gold medals. We specifically welcome the shift away from the emphasis on funding 'the worried well' to a much more consumer focus and on the most disadvantaged and inactive. This is where public policy can have the most impact.

"This will be a tough strategy – as our evidence shows that working with the most inactive is extremely intensive and expensive but with great rewards.

"Much of what we now see in the strategy is what we argued for in our Report "New Players New Tactics" 18 months ago. so of course we are pleased to see the move away from a simplistic model of driving increased sporting participation in some sports.

"This will be a great challenge for many traditional sports that cannot carry on delivering in the same way

"We recognise the importance of sport in delivering social outcomes and are pleased this is recognised by the strategy. It's also important that the strategy recognises that many barriers still exist for many groups in society in accessing sport and physical activity and these are to be addressed by the new strategy and funding will follow this.

"It has been important the government sets out clearly why they fund to sport and physical activity. With limited resources targeted intervention is far more effective at achieving its goal.

"We are pleased to see however, that the baby won't be thrown out with the bathwater and the exiting network of 150,000 amateur sports clubs and the 3m volunteers maintain that structure still feature in these plans. They can't be taken for granted.

"The move to be 'delivery neutral' is really welcome. We have seen for a long time the silos that exists in sport and physical delivery that don't exist in the minds and decisions of consumers. They are barriers we create internally and this is probably the most important element of the strategy.

"There will be a wider range of providers so the sector needs to get used to working with non traditional sporting groups to deliver these ambitious targets. That requires Sport England, CSPs NGBs and the leisure sector to really change they work and the skills they have in-house

Our observations:

A Place based strategy is to be welcomed.. some intensive investment based on insight and evidence will start to make a real difference.

We can't argue with the five key areas or outcomes they are looking for

Physical well-being

Mental well-being

Individual development

Social and community development

Economic development

We believe these are all things that sport already does to deliver for the nation and it is great that these are now recognised formally – although measuring these in a meaningful way will be a challenge to the sector.

There are some obvious and clear changes which are signaled in the document - for example the lowering of sport England remit to the age of five outside of schools, a greater emphasis on the focus being on those who tend not to take part in sport is moving away from sports living for the worried well.

We have been particularly critical of the over emphasis on the active people survey and therefore of course welcome shift to Active Lives and a series of other KPIs. We will monitor and highlight how well these are working as we move forward.

The emphasis on 'investment' is to be welcomed. Grant giving has created a certain culture in sport and the change in tone will ensure greater emphasis on the right things being delivered.

We welcome the concept of balancing between being a banker and an Innovator but we would like to work with Sport England on what this means. The innovators we work with at the Think Tank certainly don't believe SE and other large bodies are particularly good at innovation.

We like the strong message it's what you do not who are that counts. We have highlighted so much good practice in the field of sport and physical activity that isn't delivered by the traditional bodies. This will finally be embraced.

There is a concern that this strategy is backfilling a failure in social and school sport/PE policy to create and active generation. Many other departments are responsible for designing physical activity out of our daily lives - including transport. The cuts to local authority spending have been the elephant in the room during this strategy development and we would argue thi SE investment is backfilling cuts elsewhere in the public realm, which is not to be welcomed We also like the emphasis on consistent good governance as a requirement of public funding. This should also be based on seeing greater diversity in our decision making at Board and senior leadership level.

The level of investment in inactivity, young people, the core system and local delivery with the pilot areas will mean a substantial shift. We will work with Sport England to get the best evidence for these investment decisions – as there are many out there working out how they get their hands on the new money. With a customer led approach we hope it won't be some of the current operators with the best websites! We want to see genuine community engagement and collaboration at local level. It is right Sport England might need to step in and intervene at times. The £130m invested in 10 areas will be an interesting process to say the least.

We warmly welcome the emphasis on Workforce and making sure CIMSPA is the lead body. We need to see the sector professionalise and we have a great opportunity in this strategy to achieve that.