Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

Tanni Grey-Thompson, chair of Sport Wales.

Thank you very much.

Brian Davies, chief executive officer of Sport Wales.

Welcome to both of you. We will move straight into questions, if that is okay. I'll ask the first.

In your evidence paper, you said that,

'participation in sport is already significantly skewed against inequality and people on low incomes'.

So, that was in the evidence that you've given us. How will that inequality gap be affected by these further cuts, both those that are being seen by central Government and local authorities, as well?

Time will tell, I guess, but the initial cut we received this year of 10.5 per cent does mean that we've impacted on our funding to partners, and partners are key in delivering to those communities and those groups that are proportionately disaffected in terms of participation in sport. So, it's inevitable that, if our partners can do less in those areas, then there will be an impact. How much of an impact is always difficult to quantify. We minimised as much as possible that impact by passing on only 3.5 per cent of that 10.5 per cent cut to partners, but it's still an impact, and in some cases, we were already changing the investment into some of those partners in line with our strategy and the Vision for Sport and so, a further cut was going to exacerbate some of their issues. The whole investment approach that we adopt is predicated, in the main, on trying to address those inequalities. The Vision for Sport talks about everybody having a lifelong enjoyment of sport and the key being 'everybody'. So, what the actual impact will be is difficult to say, but there will be an impact, for sure.

And I think the group of people who find it hardest to get involved in sport, that's quite a difficult thing to change. So, the partner approach, in terms of where our funding is going, everyone is absolutely understanding that those are the people who we need to get to, but it's difficult to keep engaging those people. So, we might not see the impact of it for a couple of years, actually, in terms of when we get to see people who come through sport and through the data we collect and the data that the partners collect. But there will be an impact in terms of what people are able to deliver.

Thank you. I know Lee wants to come in.

Yes. I just want to explore this issue a bit, because obviously nobody wants your funding to go down, least of all you, and there's going to be an adverse impact somewhere, clearly. But in terms of this argument that you're advancing that it's going to particularly disadvantage those who you've failed to really engage with in the first place very well, you said that the cut for partner bodies is 3.5 per cent, but how does that compare with other pots of activity? Your elite sport programme, for example, how much has that been cut?

That was across the board; it wasn't just community sport.

Okay.

So, it is ultimately up to partners what they prioritise, but they know, they are in full knowledge that our next set of investment decisions is predicated on improvements in these areas that we are prioritising, such as inequalities in provision. So, it was across the board, so they could change their elite provision if they wanted to.

So, you could have chosen to protect participation funding in this round.

We don't work like that any more. We leave it to our partners to decide what their priorities are, as I said, in the full knowledge that they know what our priorities are. So, we're not prescriptive, as such. We do identify that—. The full budget that we give them is broken into two, one being revenue from Welsh Government and the other one being lottery, which also comes through Welsh Government but is a separate funding stream, in effect. And lottery tends to be used for performance purposes rather than community by our partners. But we also run a community access scheme—Be Active Wales is lottery funded—and that is open to communities and clubs to apply for short-term grants.

I just want to test the arguments, really. Obviously, you’re having a reduction in funding, which you don’t want, and I understand that, and the group you’re choosing to illustrate the impact of this most on is disadvantaged groups, when actually you could have done more yourself to protect them.

I was actually responding to a question about what the impact on that part of the community was, so I wasn’t saying it was our priority to cut that area.

Sure, it's in your evidence. Yes, that's in your evidence.

We did a significant amount of in-house modelling, when we had what the indicative figures may look like, to work out what that impact would be on sport, and then did a lot of work with the partners to brief them and prepare them for what cuts might look like. Then, when we had the actual figure, we did further work on that. We’re moving away from a process of—. I’ve sat on various sports councils for probably the last 30 years and seen quite a big evolution in the models, in terms of, 25 years ago, Sport Wales and the other home country sport councils would have been very, very prescriptive as to what they wanted from the partners. But, actually, the partners are the experts in that particular sport in the areas, they know the coaches, they know the clubs, so I think the model where we are now is quite a grown-up model. And Brian’s absolutely right, it’s up to the partners to decide, with our priorities, how best to use the money that they have available.

But I would assume their instinct is going to be to protect elite sport first.

No, I don’t think that’s fair. In fact, I know that’s not correct.

Okay.

The governing bodies, in the main—. We have several types of partners, but, in the main, governing bodies have such a broad range of responsibilities for their sport in the sector. Elite sport is only one. There’s an awful lot of work that goes on with safeguarding, community coaching. You know, pick a subject that sport doesn’t touch, and governing bodies tend to be doing some work in that area. In terms of elite sport, it’s only a part of what governing bodies do, for sure. It gets a lot of attention though. Understandably, in a year of the Olympics and Paralympics, it gets heightened attention, and I can see why people think governing bodies prioritise, in the main, elite sport, but they do an awful lot of work across the board.

And we’ve moved away from demanding medal targets from the sports, because that drives a culture and a set of behaviours that aren’t positive in terms of how they impact the grass roots and the pathway and the development. We believe that if you produce well-rounded athletes then the medals look after themselves. Actually, if you ask the public, most of the public don’t remember the numbers; they might remember special moments or they might remember a gold medal. Actually, gold, silver, bronze, at whatever level, is not what connects. The focus especially is on seeing these amazing moments, but I think the partners understand that if they don’t develop that broad base, you’re not going to get the medallists. So, it’s a long-term view. The Vision for Sport as well, which is not time limited, which I think is important, is about developing that culture change.

Okay, thank you.

Siân wants to come in as well.

Yes, two points from me. One, can you provide a list of the partners who receive funding from you and how much they receive, so that we can see how that reduction has impacted them in financial terms? That would be very useful for us to see that.

Certainly we can. We can do that through the Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you. Secondly, you say that you don't quite know what the impact is in terms of community participation. Have you considered undertaking some sort of impact assessment, an equalities impact assessment, as is done by other organisations? Because that then would help make the case in terms of mitigating the reduction.

Yes, certainly. As Tanni mentioned earlier, we did an assessment of what we could do generally when the Government was talking about cuts. At the start, of course, they were talking about a cut of over 20 per cent. So, we looked at what the response would be to a cut of that kind, and we did an impact assessment of the different situations that could be in front of us. So, yes, we have done one. That's when we came up with trying to keep as much of the cut as we could internally, before providing anything to our partners. So, that was the result of the impact assessment that we did, generally: it was to try and do things internally in terms of the cut, as much as possible.

And that looked at equality specifically. Was it an equalities impact assessment, or just—?

No, because it related to—. What's the word in Welsh? I'm not sure. Everything that we're responsible for, we have to look at the impact assessment for each of those—so, language, equality, gender, everything like that.

It was part—

It's an integrated impact assessment—that's the English term, sorry.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for that. Just finally from me, what would the effect be if the same funding reduction that you saw this year were to be repeated with the next budget?

It would be a big problem. We were fortunate last time. There were several things in the balance that we could take advantage of in order to try to absorb the cut as much as we could internally. Some of those things won't be available next year, so it would be very difficult, and more of a reduction would be passed on to the partners and governing bodies. To be honest, for some of the partners, that will—once again, it's an English word—be an existential matter for them. They've seen major changes in several ways, and a large cut from us again would be a major problem for them. Some will be able to continue if we pass on a large reduction to them, but some of the smaller bodies will be facing major problems.

Apologies for the noise. We're not quite sure what is—.

Just on that point—diolch, Robin—in terms of how you're able to support secondary tier governing bodies to cope with the effect of reduced incomes, is that going to create more of an issue, do you think, if this is repeated next year?

It would definitely have an impact, if it was to be repeated, because some of the options we had this year, to absorb some of that cut internally, won't be available to us. There were things like, with our pension deficit, we were able to manipulate some of the issues to do with that pension deficit. We've done that; we won't be able to do that twice. There were other things like underspends on certain projects, or delays in internal projects, that we could instigate, but we've done that; we won't be able to do it twice. So, a further cut of any nature would be difficult to absorb to the level we did last time, and, therefore, passing it on will cause problems to the sector.

We are working with the sector, mainly with the governing bodies of sport, to look at their resilience. There's a project going on at the minute where we can try and encourage efficiencies, or help with efficiencies across the board, in terms of collaborative working, looking at a future model of governance for governing bodies, especially maybe the smaller ones. So, there are some things that are being undertaken to try and futureproof the whole situation, but a substantive cut would be very problematic, because we wouldn't be able to absorb the same level as we did last time.

Okay, thanks. We'll move on to Carolyn.

[Inaudible.]—events in the Senedd were about the importance of sport with health—the connection with mental and physical health. Would you just explain or talk about the impact, perhaps on the NHS, that these cuts might have, and people not being able to participate in sport, and the impact of that?

Thank you. Physical activity is such an important part of keeping people out of the NHS, and, obviously, that goes with being able to have a good diet—it's, you know, you need places or programmes to be able to participate. We know, at a UK level, that type 2 diabetes costs the UK £10 billion a year, and that's set to rise in the next couple of years. I think they're looking at it going up to £15 billion in the next three years. That is largely preventable by having access to physical activity. We know the mental health benefits of being physically active. I think, at the Senedd event, we talked about impact on young people in terms of building resilience and developing relationships and connections. So, physical activity across every part of Wales is incredibly important. But if you like sport and you like physical activity, that's one thing. The groups of people we're talking to who are the hardest to reach or the easiest to ignore, if we can't connect with them, then the detriment to their long-term health is significant. So, now we know that people are hitting frailty in their 40s and taking a long time to die. It sounds really harsh when you say it, but living with frailty for 40 years costs a huge amount of money, and a lot of that can be prevented by physical activity.

So, a lot of the work that Sport Wales does then with the partners is about that lifelong love. And we also know people drop in and out. It's not as easy to say that, if you have a brilliant experience as a child, you will definitely keep going. We know that mums have different experiences with physical activity, families do. There's not one lever to pull to bring about the change. So, physical activity is such an important part, and the vast majority of people I know want to keep the NHS free at the point of delivery, but we also know it's an incredibly difficult place right now. So, physical activity is a really important part of changing that pattern of behaviour. But people tend to worry about physical activity when they've hit issues with their health, and some of it's reversible, but actually that's why we need to do so much more with young people and the harder to reach, easy to ignore groups to get them to develop good patterns of behaviour now.

[Inaudible.]—any cuts to the NHS. They see the NHS as the NHS and the hospitals and the health boards. And when they might distribute funding to sports facilities through local authorities or whatever, or social health care, then it's criticised because it's taking away from the NHS. But would you say that prevention at this early stage is important, really, and should be included as part of that measure, maybe, going forward?

Yes, I would. I’d fully agree with that. It was a great event last week. It was fantastic to see some unfamiliar faces in the room, which is good news for us because that means we're reaching new audiences in terms of potential partners. We’ve talked a lot so far about governing bodies of sport and those kinds of partners, but, in terms of this issue and the preventative health agenda, it's the other partners that we're currently not entwined with the way we should be—so, the health boards, Public Health Wales, education even. So, I think that the words I'd use in terms of the priorities of Government spending is that cutting sport, which is a fantastic tool for the preventative health agenda, is a false economy. We've got fantastic stats that show, for every £1 of public money spent on sport and physical activity, there's a £4.44 return in terms of social investment for Wales. That's a great return for public investment, and it should be celebrated. So, if you cut sport, you're cutting that return as well.

I think this is a focus—I know this is a focus for us. It's hugely important in our strategy and our business plan. The priority we've put on establishing sport partnerships across Wales is vital here. Their links with the local health boards are going to be crucial. The Cardiff and Vale health board were at the Senedd event last week, Claire Beynon, and just to have her insight, knowledge and support for the physical activity and sport agenda is crucial. Repeat that across all the other health boards and we've got a very powerful method of trying to make sport the greatest preventative health tool in Wales.

Before you carry on, I think Lee might have wanted to come in. No. Okay.

I think in the past we've talked about the importance of access to sports and facilities for disadvantaged communities, and the findings were that having local access was really important—in community centres, village halls and local sports centres was really important. And we've heard also that the health boards use community centres and local leisure centres as well for preventative, for physiotherapy more nowadays, moving towards community provision. So, how concerned are you regarding cuts to local authorities' budgets? We're hearing this year of further cuts, they're having to look at the core funding for education, social healthcare, and looking to close more leisure centres, community facilities, which they don't see as statutory—you know, they're not in legislation. So, do you talk to local authorities? Have you got connections with them? Is there any way you can help connect?

Yes, we do. We have regular contact with local authorities, but it tends to be at the leisure provision, so the sport development or a department like that within a local authority. One of the purposes of the sport partnerships is to be more strategic with local authorities and have education, health, police and crime, housing around the table as well—so, more strategic input and discussion about how local authorities and sport can work together to gain much better synergies. So, the relationships with local authorities are good but they're at a level that has been a traditional level, and we want to try and change that relationship.

The facility issue is crucial—obviously, it's critical—and there are some particular facilities that are facing heightened issues. Those with high energy usage costs are particularly vulnerable. So, the obvious ones would be swimming pools. We're not aware of any immediate or imminent closures; however, we are aware of the pressures on local authorities when it comes to that kind of facility stock. It's a bit more complicated because the facility landscape in Wales is complicated—it's private, it's community clubs, it's leisure trusts, it's local authorities, and, in some cases, a complete mix of all that.

So, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the facility issue here, but we are aware of it. We have introduced a couple of direct schemes to try and help. So, the energy savings grant scheme is there for community clubs to apply for solar panels, insulation—things that will help reduce not only their running costs, but also help their sustainability and their environmental credentials as well. But that is a limited pot, and some community clubs can't apply because they don't have a long enough lease on the facilities that they're operating out of.

Can I just ask one final question?

Yes, certainly.

Since COVID, we've heard about a decline in volunteers coming forward. Have you seen a return of volunteers coming to help with various—?

I think that's variable. There's a couple of good schemes out there, though; the Welsh Sports Association and a few other organisations are running surveys and some awareness opportunities for volunteering, but it has been difficult. It's probably no different to a lot of other things that were negatively impacted during COVID. There's been a gradual change back to normal, but volunteering is not back to the levels that we once saw. But the study that is being conducted will be quite insightful to see what, if anything, we need to do specifically.

Great, thank you.

Sorry, just to add that volunteers are a really important part of the landscape, not just in terms of what they give to people who are participating, but actually, by being a volunteer, they're doing a lot of physical activity themselves and making connections. I think sometimes when we talk about sport we just think about the participants, not about everybody else who's involved.

We learned at committee that, to encourage people in communities to take part in sport, if they had just somebody they knew, they could connect with, to actually lead them into it, that made such a difference.

Yes. Just one thing to add, sorry. I talked about the social return earlier—for every £1, it's £4.44. Part of that is volunteering and there's a benefit to the Welsh economy of £430 million from sports volunteering. So, it's a significant sum. It would have been higher, probably, pre COVID, so it's worth noting.

Thank you for that.

Could you circulate those statistics? I love statistics. [Laughter.]

Yes, sure.

She loves a stat. [Laughter.]

Our insight department will be delighted to know, I'm sure. [Laughter.]

We'll move on to Laura.

Thank you. Sorry, for being late, No. 1. I'm just wondering, I do—. Of course, I share my colleagues' concerns that sport and culture are the first things to always be cut, yet, as you've just outlined—and I've always been a big advocate for it so there's no point hiding it—as a preventative agenda, sport is such an important tool in bringing up the health of our nation to a good standard, especially with childhood obesity, that sort of thing. There is evidence of it in the cross-party group on sport; I don't know if you're aware of that, that we did a big report into that. What became very apparent was that things shut down in the winter as well—that was one of the major concerns. We're used to a lot of rain in Wales. So, what happens in those times? As my colleague just said, leisure centres are closing down; obviously, that's something we're all concerned about, and you've answered that already. But what about outside sports—football, rugby, hockey, whatever it might be, junior particularly—that rely on pitches? You can only rotate the pitches so many times and then you have to cancel training, you have to cancel matches, and, basically, there's nothing for those young people to do—and adults as well. A lot of the clubs haven't had the investment at the lower level that they should have had, so that's a concern. There's maybe a priority on the top clubs, but those middle tiers particularly, community sports are getting a lot, but middle tiers particularly are not getting the funding to be able to train or for things outside. So, it's not fair, it's a bit slapdash, especially in Wales, as I said, with the lack of all-weather facilities. And also what we've recognised—sorry, Chair—is that those all-weather facilities have not been done very strategically, in terms of they're heavy in some cities and towns, but what about the rural areas? There's not that spread, there's not that accessibility for all that we all want to see. So, I just wonder if you could comment on that. Thanks.

There's quite a lot there—

Sorry—going off on one. [Laughter.]

—but they're all valid points, for sure. In terms of the facility stock for pitches or outdoor facilities, there is some good work going on with some of the bigger governing bodies, especially—so, football and rugby, we have a joint programme with football, rugby and hockey for replacement artificial pitches. But it's a small amount of money, really, in terms of the scale of the issue. So, we set aside £1 million of our capital funding to work with those three governing bodies on a programme of replacement, or enhancement, or even new. But £1 million doesn't go far. The scale of an artificial turf pitch cost is upwards of £700,000. That's for a replacement; brand new, you're talking £2.5 million, potentially, depending on the location. So, it's a contribution, but it will only achieve so much. But the FAW, the WRU and Hockey Wales do try and be strategic about where those facilities ought to be, and, if there's a proposal to replace a hockey pitch in a particular area, there ought to be provision for hockey somewhere else in that locality, otherwise they don't get some of the financial support from us. But with only a pot of £1 million, you're scratching at the surface, really. But it does help, and there are some excellent examples out there of artificial pitches that have been put into communities and making big improvements and having a positive impact.

In terms of rurality, it's an interesting subject. It's come up quite a bit in the conversations we have with our partners—they're called 'What matters' conversations. Rurality has come up as one of the top items. Again, it is one of the aspects of the sport partnerships. We're hoping that they will have a much better handle on those issues in their areas and give them due attention. We also use our investment approach for those sport partnerships to consider rurality as part of the weighting mechanism. So, it does get taken into account in terms of the money we give to the sport partnerships once they're established. But, again—maybe I haven't mentioned this enough—the nearly £21 million we get in terms of revenue is 0.2 per cent of the health budget. And yet all we're talking about here are the issues that sport can help alleviate. Well, if you're only given 0.2 per cent of a budget, your impact is going to be a lot less than it could be.

It would be amazing if we could do more for facilities, in terms of—. I think that, if you're sporty, or considered sporty, you don't necessarily mind training in cold, rain, whatever, but there's a group who, actually, are the ones that you want to keep involved, and it comes back to that facilities make a huge difference. This was way before my time. The first athletics club I joined was Bridgend Athletics club. We had a grass track, and we used to train in the multistorey car park in the winter. It was fine. But, actually, something that Bridgend's done, when they had funding to build a track, they built a 300m track, which is really unusual in athletics, but, actually, it's about space, it's about use, it's about what you need that facility for. It was really controversial at the time; I'd never heard of a 300m—. I don't think anyone had heard of a 300m track. But, actually, in terms of being able to get people participating, it's really good. So, actually, do we need an Olympic, Paralympic-standard athletics facility? No. It's about what we need for the community to involve people. A lot of work has been done on that in terms of being quite realistic, but it would be nice to be able to do more.

Just to add a bit as well, we're talking quite a bit about increasing participation, and the evidence seems to show that trying to change people's motivation is not that successful; what you really need to do is make it welcoming and something they see themselves as wanting to do. That does hit onto the facilities agenda quite a bit. You know, if it's a muddy old pitch with ramshackle changing rooms with no facilities for women or young people, then it's not creating that environment to try and encourage more people to participate in sport and physical activity. So, the facilities agenda is very much interrelated to everything to do with what we're trying to achieve through the Vision for Sport.

Is it my questions now? Great. Good, that follows on. My next question is to what extent Sport Wales collaborated with other institutions to mitigate the impact of declining public funding. On this—I just have a supp before I give you that question—I used to be shadow education Minister, and we were talking about opening up twenty-first century schools to use their facilities, and that was a way of dealing with the non-facilities available in rural areas. That's a great idea. If there are more twenty-first century schools being built, that's great, with great facilities, but not all of them—and old schools as well—are being opened to the public, due to safety reasons or lack of staff. So, it's a lovely idea, but it's not actually happening on the ground. Have you had conversations around that, as well as other institutions, to try and mitigate that? Thanks.

Yes, we have. Again, if I'm going to be frank, I'd say there have been shards of light on that kind of progress. We did a pilot; we reported to the last inquiry on sport in disadvantaged areas that we were running a pilot on exactly that, so the beyond the school day pilot, the results of which have been published, and we've rolled it into a proposal called Daily Active, so making children active from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, and that includes the facilities stock at these community-focused schools. There has been some improvement in terms of relationships with the relevant areas of Government on the community-focused schools side, but, as I said, they are shards of light, really. What we want to do is focus the glare of attention on the potential here, and so it is something we are attempting to improve. But it is proving difficult, for all sorts of obvious reasons, in terms of the pressures other areas of Government are under in terms of their own budgets and what they're trying to achieve. But I'll come back to a comment I used earlier about the false economy: if you want more out of your children in terms of educational return and potential, then keeping them active is a really good way of doing that. It improves their attention and the way they can cognitively act at school. So, it is a priority for us, but there's not enough happening.

I agree with you there. As you were saying earlier, not enough of the health budget is coming in, so not enough of the—. The staff to man those out-of-hours to enable those facilities to be used I'm assuming it would come from the school budget, so that's cutting into that, so how do we get around that? Are you having conversations to try and ask the Welsh Government to try and give more money to local authorities, to set that aside for schools specifically, so they can have those out-of-hours facilities? Because otherwise, it's not going to happen, is it? How are you going to get round that, and the safety issue as well?

I think one of the keys to success in this area is not to focus on one particular area of Government; I think it is collaborative across several. The Daily Active programme is designed to be collaborative between public health, maybe local health boards, education, and ourselves. It is an area that we think could have a huge impact, but we've hit a bit of a brick wall. We're still trying to climb that wall. We haven't given up. We're pretty sure that we can make some progress, but it's going to take a lot of effort, and it's a little bit slow. But, yes, I don't think we will be successful if we just focus on education or, 'The local school needs to—'. It needs to be collaborative across several agencies.

It does, but those are the sticking points.

They tend to be in the end, yes. But, as I say, sometimes, you can convince more locally once you point out the benefits to them of their agenda, because they might think it's a sport agenda that's being pushed, whereas, really, it's an educational agenda and a health agenda, as much as a sport participation agenda.

I think that's where the sports partnerships can also be really helpful in terms of knowing the local area, because it could be—obviously, with appropriate safeguarding—teachers, it might be volunteers, it might be clubs, depending what's in the area, depending what sports facilities are there. But that daily activity is so important. What I've seen in other areas, in terms of what happens in the summer holidays, six weeks—. Okay, the weather might be nice, but, in terms of how parents want to protect their children's safety—. I'm not sure this sort of misnomer that when we were all young we all went out from dawn till dusk with half a packet of sandwiches, 2p in our sock for a phone call—. I'm not sure that ever existed for a lot of people.

It did for me.

In your sock? That's very specific. [Laughter.]

But parents now want to know where their children are. The world has changed. So, actually, in terms of opening school sites, it's not just before school and after school. There are lots of options. And, actually, again, in terms of families and how they participate, there are programmes mums and daughters participate in together. It's really important. We know that if a woman has had a poor experience of physical activity, and this is a bit of a generalisation—. They recognise boys, slightly like puppies, need to be fed and exercised, but girls are quite often protected. Some of those inequalities that exist are really hard to change. So, there are lots of ways that, not just thinking about young people being active in their local community—. It's about families, about mums, about grandparents, and if there's an opportunity to unlock that school site, that could have a really big impact.

I think Tanni has just hit on something I should have mentioned, which is that there is some optimism in that there are a couple of example schemes that we can point to when we're talking to partners or potential partners about where they can gain success. There's the 60 plus scheme that we've done with Welsh Government funding, and the PIPYN scheme, which is the children and families scheme. There are pilots in three areas. And then there's our 'beyond the school day' pilots as well. There are some interesting outcomes from each of those schemes that we can point partners to, but it does require resourcing if we're going to roll anything out wider, or enhance even those schemes. But I think, yes, I've got to give some credit to areas of Government that have seen the benefits and want to help. But it's about whether we can, as I said, turn those shards of light into some sort of glare and massive sunshine.

Just really quickly, Chair—. Thank you for that. Just to say that it's great, as you said, for opening up the school facilities after hours for the families and the children, but it's also for the adults, it's also for those sports clubs that can't train on their muddy pitches if they've done their crop rotation—not crop rotation, sorry, I'm a farmer’s daughter; I mean field rotation—and they can't do any more. So, it's for adults as well, isn't it, bringing them into the clubs. So, it would solve quite a few problems in one, not just, obviously, wanting our young people—

And that's where the 60 plus scheme could demonstrate benefits, for sure. Most local authorities have got a scheme, and I'm sure they'd want to do more in that area than the funding currently allows for, and so opening up school facilities beyond the school day might be a method of enhancing that scheme at very little cost. But we do need to address some of the issues that it presents the people who run the school.

Thanks.

Diolch. Just to alert Members and witnesses, we've got 20 minutes left. Would you have time to stay with us an extra five minutes at the end? Would that be all right? Diolch. But if Members could be as concise as possible so that we can get to as many questions as possible, that would be fantastic. Carolyn.

Have you tried to access additional funding from trusts or foundations—you know, private funding? Is that something you've looked at?

Sorry, can you say that again?

Excuse me. Have you tried to access funding from trusts or foundations?

No. Back in 2015, we managed to change the royal charter to allow us to set up a subsidiary, or subsidiaries, if necessary. We haven’t enacted that. We’d still need Welsh Government permission, and the Privy Council, were we to establish a subsidiary. We think that’s probably the only way we could access funds of that nature, or commercial sponsorship, even. The reality, though, is that our remit letter does allow for clawback if we generate our own income in terms of value for the public purse. So, it is a very—. It's not a difficult area, but it’s an interesting area that we haven’t progressed, and I don’t believe any other sports council has either.

Sport England do have a subsidiary called Caversham Lakes Ltd, and that was set up for London 2012 to build the rowing facility, and they’ve used it to fund the This Girl Can programme, which is an advertising programme on terrestrial television, plus support for local authorities. But that’s the only thing they’ve ever done, and they used lottery funding for that, I believe, rather than commercial funding. We’re not allowed to spend lottery funding on ourselves, or any schemes that we run.

There is work ongoing at UK level in terms of how to bring sponsorship into the governing bodies of sport. At the UK level, there’s quite a lot of value in kind, but in terms of cold, hard cash, it’s actually considerably lower than you might imagine. Around 2012, there was a lot of sponsorship, but at the end of the Olympics and Paralympics, a lot of those big sponsors went to other places. So, definitely, at UK level, it’s a governing body issue.

I think the arts council have also mentioned that it’s difficult to balance attracting, say, commercial sponsors away from your partners. You could be treading on their toes, really, if you’re out in the market looking for commercial sponsors as they are. They may see it as being not supportive. But in answer to the question, it’s not an area we’ve—

Maybe it’s something at UK level or—

Carolyn, forgive me, would you be happy if we moved on to other Members? Is that all right? Forgive me, because I'm very aware that Lee and Siân haven't asked as many questions. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thanks, Carolyn.

We'll move to Siân.

Turning to the remit letter that you mentioned briefly there, I take it that that was agreed back at the beginning of this current Government’s term. Has it changed at all to reflect the change in funding that you receive?

That’s an interesting question, Siân. No, it hasn’t changed in general. We get a new one each time there’s a change to the budget, but it just gives information about the change. It hasn’t changed in terms of the Government’s needs, or the requirements from the Government. So, it does still exist as it was, apart from the sum that was in the first letter. That sum has changed, but the requirements haven’t changed.

Has there been any discussion about amending the remit letter? Is there a desire on your part, perhaps, to have that discussion?

There is a desire to make it more simple in general. But in terms of the cuts that we received, at the beginning, when there was talk of a 20 per cent reduction, we were talking about the need to change that letter, because we couldn’t see how we were going to provide a significant part of what that letter required with a cut of that kind.

When the cut came, and it was smaller, and we looked at that, we gave the officials an example of what the impact would be, but we haven’t spoken about changing the letter in general. There are maybe two years left in terms of the Government's term, so what would be more handy would be to have more long-term information about the support that’s available, rather than the letter itself. So, long-term funding and assurance, certainty, in terms of that, would be more effective for us, and for our partners too. Because we do make offers to them every year, and it's difficult to try to encourage long-term change when you're just giving an annual sum to them.

So, you can tick every box in the remit letter, can you?

I'll have to look again at it. There are two years left, so some of the things we were saying we wouldn't do in the first and second years. So, we'll have to look to see if we can still reach some of the things that we had said would be more long term.

Can you give us examples, just so that we can have a flavour of what is in those requirements?

It's difficult. The letter is almost 12 pages long, so I'll have to look back at that. But, I was quite confident at the start, because the letter had been established under the programme for government and the programme for government had been written through the lens of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the sports vision and the sports strategy for Wales had been created following the same kind of thing. So, there was quite a bit of overlap and I was quite confident that it would be okay, but I'll have to look at it again, or the board will have to look at it again, to make sure that everything can have some sort of participation, even if it isn't completed fully. We'll have to look at it again.

Are there some basic legal duties—on safeguarding, for example—that are undermined because of the lack of funding, for you as a body but also for the partners and the governing bodies?

For our part, no. We have carried on with the agreements or contracts that we have with the NSPCC and the Ann Craft Trust. Those are still in existence. We still fund those. In terms of partners, I hope that that's not the case. There's a process where governing bodies, primarily, go through a process of ensuring that they reach a particular level in terms of the child protection in sport unit. So, those are the safeguarding levels—safeguarding level 1, 2, 3. So, different bodies have reached different standards there. And it is part of what we call our capability framework. So, they have to be working on that and giving us some kind of guarantee that they are creating a structure that is of benefit to children and young people, and to adults, in terms of the Ann Craft Trust.

So you are confident that even those clubs at the grass-roots level are fulfilling their obligations in terms of DBS and all of these other checks that need to be undertaken. Is that a priority in terms of the use of the funding, which has reduced?

So, it's the governing bodies who are responsible for the grass roots, and the clubs. They're not our clubs; they're the governing bodies' clubs, so they have the responsibility there. The duty that's on us is to make sure that the governing bodies have structures in place to make sure that that is the case. That is a big question, though, of everything being safe in every part of Wales, in every club, because sport very often just reflects what is happening in society, and things go wrong in society. So, what we are trying to do through our partners is to make sure that there is some sort of risk assessment done and that we reduce the chance of something going wrong.

What changes would you like to see in the Welsh Government's budget process? You've spoken about having that long-term view, but in the past I think you've talked about creating some kind of preventative budget within health. So, could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Yes. Carolyn mentioned that event last week in the Senedd. The future generations commissioner, Derek Walker, was there, and Derek said something that I found interesting. I hadn't thought about this before, but he spoke about creating, in terms of the general Government budget, some sort of preventative amount of money, and that is very interesting. I'm not sure how sensible that would be in terms of the people who run the budget, but, in terms of a body like ours, that makes a lot of sense to us. Apart from that, we haven't spoken a great deal—only a little bit with officials—about the fact that it's only a small percentage of the budget that is given to us. But the letter from the Government is 11 pages long and it asks us and our partners to do a lot of work in terms of the programme for government, but we only receive a small percentage of the Government's money, so people have to be sensible in terms of what will be provided.

Is there anything else that the Welsh Government could do other than simplify the remit and provide additional funding to you, and perhaps provide long-term funding and think about preventative work more specifically. Is there anything else that the Welsh Government could be doing to assist?

So, the relationship that we have with the Government officials is a good one—it is open, and that's a great help. So, that's good. But, in terms of other things, to help us to try to deal with the things that I was talking about just now with Laura, about working across Government, it would be very useful to have more support in terms of that.

Diolch.

Tanni.

I think that collaboration is incredibly important. Trying to spin all the plates that Government has to, I don’t envy anyone trying to do that. At Sport Wales, we do have conversations with lots of other bodies, but collaboration is really important. And any way that you could take a helicopter view of that from the Welsh Government would make a difference. It’s really easy to sit here and say, ‘Just give us more money’, and I won’t turn it down, but that’s not necessarily the answer to what we’re trying to do to change that pattern of physical activity, physical literacy. It’s education, it’s health, it’s Public Health Wales—it’s all those bodies having to work together, being able to work together.

Wales’s size is often used as a negative in terms of, certainly, resource availability et cetera, but it’s also a superpower in terms of being able to get people together—everyone knows someone who knows someone. The idea of six degrees of separation is down to about four in Wales, I think, if not less—

Fewer, definitely fewer.

Two, yes, in certain areas of Wales for sure. But, in seriousness, I think that ought to be our superpower—being able to bring bodies and key personnel together more quickly, like we did in COVID, as an example, to address some of the issues instantly. I think we're not doing a very good job of that at the moment. Lots of public bodies are facing different pressures that mean that they stay isolated. We know we need to do more work with some of those public bodies and it is something we need to focus on.

And we've got some internal work going on at the moment in terms of what that collaboration could be like—connections, how to make it happen. It's about getting the right people in the room.

Okay. Fantastic. If you could send us some more information about that, that would be really useful, please.

Members, please forgive me, I'm afraid that, because we're so tight on time, I'll have to go to Lee's questions. I'm sorry, but there'll be other things that we can pick up on in writing. Forgive me, I'm sorry about the time. Over to Lee.

Yes, just some snappy ones really, just to pick up on some of the things you've said. So, on your point about the clawback of any privately funded money that you had raised being prohibited by the remit letter, would you welcome that being removed from the remit letter, just to be clear?

Yes, sure. I mean, it's pretty vague in the remit letter, it's pretty flexible, but the chances are, were we to secure a multimillion-pound deal from a suitable commercial company, I'm pretty sure that the Treasury would look at that and go, 'Well, hang on, we used to give you £21 million. You've now secured, £x million. Why do you need our £21 million?'

Okay. Then, in a separate point, you mentioned that you found Derek Walker's argument of some preventative spend superficially attractive but would need to think it through. I guess the same argument could apply to you as an organisation. How practical would it be for you to identify some of your internal funding for preventative spend?

The way we currently invest, not very useful, because we don't prescribe, whereas the Welsh Government prescribe to us in fairly lengthy detail, in 10-, 12-page remit letters, so it's pretty prescriptive. It's very difficult then for us to do something with our partners in a similar vein, when we're not being that prescriptive. The investment approach is different now—we calculate the amount of investment a partner gets on the basis of an approach that allocates scores for what they are doing, so they are in control of changing that when we rerun the investment approach.

So, it might not be practical for you, but you still think it might be practical for the Welsh Government to do it themselves?

It's certainly worth looking at.

Yes, to look at it.

Okay. And then, just one other quick question, as you mentioned earlier the impact on your partner bodies of the funding squeeze. I'm aware there's some concern in the sector that the stand-alone Welsh bodies may find it increasingly hard to sustain an operation in Wales, and there's some concern that some of them might revert to the mothership, if you like, to go back to GB bodies or England-and-Wales bodies, which would have other adverse consequences on the Welsh civil society ecosystem, I guess. I just wonder if you have any reflections on that.

Yes, we could spend quite a long time on that.

Let's not, but if you could just give us the headline.

Well, the headline would be that there are various models out there already in terms of Welsh, British, English-Welsh, no British. It's very complicated, and each sport is different. So, we are doing a current piece of work about the resilience of the sector, which does cover that, and what is right for the Welsh body. Again, it is going to be different depending on the sport, but we are supportive of Welsh bodies. In terms of their current existence, it doesn't necessarily need to change and be absorbed by a British body. But it might be—

Do you think it might because of the funding situation?

I'm sure it would have an impact, but there's an impact in the British situation at the minute as well, and they're doing the same piece of work, really.

They're going through system master planning, which is looking at that, so it's important that we do what's right for Wales, but with a lens of the UK as well.

So, you see it as separate from the funding considerations, do you?

I don't see them being inherently linked, because we do fund some very small governing bodies that have always existed separate to a British body, and it's not related to the level of investment we give them. So, in one or two instances, a change in our level of investment might impact on that, but it doesn't necessarily impact on it, but it might.

Okay. And just to close, I'm going to pivot onto a different subject, which is just a progress report on the way the WRU are getting on in implementing the recommendations made to it, and if you have a view on how they're doing with that.

Yes. We have constant dialogue with the Welsh Rugby Union, as we do with all the other governing bodies. They've made significant change and progress against the governance report that was part of the changes that were required to reinstate our funding. What they've done on the board level is substantial. That change is significant, as I said.

The other conditions that necessitated our withdrawal of funding back two years ago, they have now met them, so funding has been reinstated to the Welsh Rugby Union. But they go through the normal processes of accountability and capability review. So, they, for example, have developed a strategy, which was one of the conditions, but I know there are further stages to that strategy that are required. They've established an oversight group to see how progress is being made against the Rafferty review. Dame Anne Rafferty herself chairs that oversight group. We have Dame Katherine Grainger on it, from UK Sport. So, they've made significant progress.

On the Rafferty oversight board, do you have any sense of how often that's been used, of cases referred to it?

It's not about cases being referred to it; they look at the Rafferty recommendations and the progress being made. So, I think there is a set schedule for that oversight group to meet to check on progress.

Okay. That's active, is it?

That is active, yes. There are three members on that group—it's Anne Rafferty herself, Kath Grainger from UK Sport, and the director of HR from the Football Association—. I've forgotten her name.

And she's the only one who's not a dame.

Yes, she's an outlier.

Okay. Very good. It's good to see that there's balance. Just in terms of the learning from that whole WRU experience for the rest of the sector, how have you sought to apply those lessons to the organisations that you fund?

Initially, I think the main learning is that our partners have recognised that bodies, no matter how big they are, need to be following principles of good governance. So, the guidance that was in existence then still exists now—the governance and leadership framework for Wales and the capability framework that we operate. It's basically given that some weight, so that the WRU experience has helped others realise why that's there and why it's important. So, in a sense, nothing else has changed, because that guidance is still valid. We are currently reviewing that to try and simplify it and bring in the behavioural aspect, because you can have all the policies in the world and have all the documentation that says you're a good organisation, but if your behaviours aren't right, then it's pointless. So, we are trying to change those documents to include an element of the behavioural aspect, and that's the bit we've learned from the WRU—

And are you considering an oversight board, then, for the rest of the sector?

No.

No.

Well, logically, what you just said to me was that—

No, the oversight group for the WRU is there to check on everything that came out of the recommendations for the things that had gone wrong—

Yes, but the principle of having oversight to make sure those cultures and procedures are followed through—

Well, there's a current process. So, we would just implement the current process for checking on partners' progress—

So, what would be the oversight process for that?

So, every governing body has a full review once every four years, which is consultants going in, a bit like an internal audit. Currently, there's a self-assessment process that we ask everyone to do annually, but we're changing that in the capability framework to more of an adult relationship, if you like. But there are five principles in the new capability framework, and so they'll be monitoring regularly against those principles with partners.

Would that include spot checks?

I think that's what they are, really, without using that term—

Well, every four years is not a spot check.

No, that's a full governance review.

Okay.

The checks against the principles ought to be regular. I mean, spot checks—. If we're told of an issue, then we can do within our regulatory powers what we can do. Our regulatory powers are limited though.

Yes, that gets us into a whole other discussion about whether we should be a regulator or an ombudsman or—

Yes, we are reliant on a very healthy relationship, a mature relationship with partners, but when things go wrong, there's a limit to what we can do. Ultimately, our only course of action is to withdraw funding, but sometimes that can have worse effects than—

That's not always the answer. I think the issue with WRU brought it very close to home to Wales. So, I think when there had been breakdowns in governance and other issues in the past, they'd been UK bodies, and it might have felt sort of distant, or a lot of the things that are public have been at senior performance level, whereas I think what happened with WRU just made Welsh governing bodies realise that it can happen anywhere. I think it's really important that governing bodies take that—. They do take the responsibility through the framework, but it can happen at any time. Any body can have things that go wrong, and it's how quickly they recognise it and fix it. That's really important, that they don't just ignore what is going on, but they bring about change.

In terms of the spot-check issue, there are examples at the minute where there are some partners that we're withholding funding from while we await some changes that we've recognised need to be made. So, it is a bit of a constant dialogue. We have a relationship manager for each of the governing bodies. There's a team of five that have a cohort of governing bodies allocated to them. So, that relationship is important; it's about attending board meetings, and partners achieving what we've put in their offer letters. 'Spot checks' is just a different term, I think, for what we do.

That's really helpful—

Being alert is the important thing. Thank you.

I'm so sorry, we're out of time.

Thank you very much to both of you for your evidence. Thank you for staying a few minutes over time too. A transcript of what's been said will be sent to you for you to check that it's an accurate record of what's been said. Also, there are some questions that we didn't have the opportunity to ask, so, with your permission, we will ask them in writing if that's okay. But thank you very much for your time this morning. Thank you once again.

Thank you very much.

Members, we will take a break now for five minutes.

Thank you so much again.

Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch. Thanks.