As the Sport England Strategy consultation starts to take shape as a consequence of the Government launch of "Sporting Future - A new strategy for an Active Nation" it is time to take stock of how the sector is responding and will take up the new challenges posed by these opportunities and threats to the current state of play.

All too often our sector is defined by a lack of deep and genuine collaboration. yes there are 'partnerships' created to secure funding and new deals but how often have wee seen genuine and deep collaboration across the sector to better meet the needs of our consumers, customers, players, participants? As we have found all too often here at the Think Tank when we talk about the sector it conjures different images for different sports bodies or for those operating in the leisure, charity or social enterprise world. 'The Sector' certainly means something different to those thousands of sport businesses and agencies that have helped create sport as a growing business sector in the UK economy. But all too often they can feel a long way from the struggling grass roots sports clubs up and down the country giving children their first taste of 'sport' and or physical activity outside school.

That's why our pledge in 2016 at the Think Tank is to remain neutral in who delivers what in the forthcoming Sport England consultation. We will go where the evidence takes us and not be afraid to showcase the best examples across all parts of the sector. Our fundamental argument is that our consumers don't divide themselves into the silos we create across our sector, and we should learn to think like them - not caring which type of organisation delivers their activity.

In this spirit we will be announcing a series of new partnership - or collaborations over the coming weeks. We know we don't have all the answers and sometimes other people or organisations may be the best ones to deliver our mission. So we should let them! We should work with them and promote the message of collaborative leadership wherever we can.