Eye on the big society ball

---

Lord Pendry describes how the Football Foundation has helped change communities for the better in the decade since it was established.

July 25, 2000 was the perfect summer’s day to enjoy a game of sport. The trouble is, all-too often back then, there was nowhere for people of any age to play these sports. On this day I joined then England football manager Kevin Keegan and then prime minister Tony Blair at Number 10 Downing Street to launch an exciting new initiative to rebuild our dilapidated community sport facilities that had suffered decades of neglect.

The idea was simple. The Football Trust, which had been set up by the Thatcher government following the Hillsborough tragedy, had successfully brought together football and government to tackle our crumbling, unsafe stadia. By 2000, this had been largely addressed.

But rather than wind up the Trust, government, the Premier League and the FA decided to focus on local community sports facilities for ordinary people. The result was the Football Foundation. Since then, the Foundation has supported 8,000 community projects worth more than £920m. Around £393m of this has come direct from the Foundation’s core funding partners, the government, the Premier League and the FA.

The remainder has been leveraged from match-funders. It is interesting to note how the Foundation’s work is helping to achieve the coalition government’s Big Society agenda. We have also funded projects that use sport to address society’s key challenges, such as social inclusion, crime, health and education, supporting core objectives of almost all government departments.

The Foundation has funded nearly 2,500 such projects that enable communities to come together and make a difference, with us as the facilitator. On the facilities side, schools, football clubs, sports associations, and councils in towns and cities across the country have new all-weather pitches, floodlights, changing pavilions and grass pitches. The Foundation aims to invest at least 40 per cent of its funding in the top 20 per cent most deprived wards in the country – in fact, last year alone it invested 61 per cent.

This increased capacity is helping the government’s objective of delivering a mass participation post- 2012 Olympic legacy. Monitoring and evaluation shows that at Foundation-enhanced facilities, participation in football has increased each year by an average of 21 per cent, whilst multi-sport participation has increased by 13.6 per cent.

The government receives a five-to-one return on its investment in the Foundation. The Premier League matches every £1, as does the FA. The Foundation then works with applicants who source match-funding at roughly 50 per cent of the project cost. Over the past year, Foundation funding has accounted for only 44 per cent of the total project cost, stretching government funding even further. This taxpayer saving does not even begin to take into account the economic and social benefits resulting from more people being fit and healthy (obesity is estimated to cost the NHS an extra £45.5bn a year by 2050).

Whereas in France, Germany and Holland, the taxpayer foots the bill for school or community sports facilities, for the past ten years government has teamed up with the Premier League and the FA to create an ultraefficient delivery model to do just that. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Foundation has received delegations from France, Holland, the German Bundesliga (football league), South Africa and even Australia, seeking to learn more about our blueprint, with a view to replicating its success back home.

We are also extremely proud to have been chosen by the Mayor of London to deliver the facilities element of his 2012 Olympic legacy for the capital. This is very good news for London as it will ensure that every London borough will benefit from new or upgraded sports facilities. Legacy was a major reason that London won the 2012 Olympics.

It will be crucial for winning the bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2018, and the fact that the government and the football partners have already established a unique organisation dedicated to providing a long-term community legacy is powerful evidence of how serious this country is at using the power of football to make a positive difference to those most in need.

There is still much to do. Estimates from the FA put the price of bringing our community football facilities up to the standard enjoyed by France, Germany or Holland at £5bn. This is not a challenge from which we shirk.

This article first appeared in The House Magazine.