Spending review: 2012 athletes protected but sports clubs suffer

Athletes training for the 2012 Olympics will have their funding protected and the Games themselves have been largely insulated but there will be deep cuts of up to 30% in other grassroots sporting bodies. Sports clubs up and down the country that had been hoping to invest in refurbishing changing rooms or building new artificial pitches will be among the losers. Any large capital projects not already approved look likely to be scrapped. As expected, given its totemic importance to the coalition and the fact most of the money has already been spent, the £9.3bn Olympics budget has been left largely untouched apart from a further £20m of savings, £7m of which could be found by scrapping a canvas wrap that was due to surround the stadium. "As a country, we are paying out in debt interest payments every day the entire UK Sport exchequer payments for a year," Hugh Robertson, the sports and Olympics minister, said. "With the deck of cards we inherited, we have got sport out of this in the best possible fashion." But the shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, said: "Dismantling support for school sport and imposing disproportionate cuts on arts organisations risks creating a lost generation of young people." He said the coalition were "playing fast and loose with Britain's economic and sporting future". Several other organisations funded by Sport England, including the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation and Sports Coach UK, also face the prospect of the axe or, at best, budget cuts of 30%. While revenue funding to the 46 governing bodies funded by Sport England will be protected until the end of their current settlement in 2013, and reduced by 15% thereafter, the capital investment fund is facing immediate cuts of 40%. Sport England, which distributes lottery and exchequer funding to grassroots sport via governing bodies such as the England and Wales Cricket Board, will face a cut in exchequer funding of a third. UK Sport, responsible for distributing money to elite athletes in Olympic sports, will have its funding drop by 27%. But in both cases, a change in the formula for lottery distribution – restoring sport's share to 20% by 2012-13 – will largely mitigate the impact by the end of the spending cycle in 2014-15. By then, Sport England's budget will actually have increased to £284m a year, the majority coming from the lottery. But it is likely that it will also have to take on responsibility for driving the promised sports participation legacy from the 2012 Olympics in the face of deep cuts to the school sports budget of £160m a year and a huge reduction in expenditure on sports facilities by local authorities facing compound cuts of 7% a year. Baroness Sue Campbell, chair of the Youth Sports Trust and UK Sport, said: "This is devastating news for the future health and wellbeing of our young people and the army of dedicated, passionate and committed people throughout the country who, through sport, have delivered such change for young people in recent years." Robertson refused to say whether the government will drop promises to get two million more people doing more sport and exercise by 2012. The huge reduction for school sport and local authorities will mean Sport England taking on responsibility for investing in infrastructure projects and, increasingly, governing bodies taking over responsibility for community sports facilities from local authorities and independent clubs. UK Sport will face a drop in funding after the 2012 Games, despite the boost from the lottery, but its overall funding will have returned to 2010-11 levels by 2013-14, according to DCMS figures. The intervening year, before the change to the lottery funding kicks in, will prove challenging. The recently appointed UK Sport chief executive, Liz Nicholl, called the settlement "a positive outcome in difficult times". UK Sport and Sport England are being asked to cut their administrative overheads, which total £17m a year, in half. Much of that is likely to be achieved when they merge after the 2012 Olympic Games, when they are expected to be encouraged to move from their central London offices to a new home on the Olympic Park.