Football Foundation

Awards

Kickstarting sustainability

The Football Foundation’s mission is to improve facilities, create opportunities and build communities throughout England. In January 2011 it implemented a new sustainability strategy for its Barclays Spaces for Sports (BS4S) programme.

While sustainability had always been an original aim of BS4S it was inevitable that some of the 200 sites would require further support especially given the current economic climate. Many have suffered severe effects from government cuts on local authority sports development units.

In-depth interviews were carried out with key BS4S staff and a healthcheck questionnaire was created for all sites to complete. This provided statistical data which the Foundation used to form a sustainability matrix.

The result is a strategy comprising both non-financial and financial intervention. This includes the employment of six regional activity and sustainability advisers providing dedicated one-on-one support and expertise. The focus is on helping sites to move away from reliance on Football Foundation and Barclays funding. The Foundation says that no other UK sport-related or funding organisation has a team working directly with existing funded sites to help them achieve sustainability in this manner.

The Foundation has also introduced a £500,000 fund that sites can access to help increase participation and repair damaged or neglected facilities.

A sample of nine sites receiving intervention which have been running long enough to evidence change shows that the average number of weekly users has risen from 128 to 170 per week, while average number of weekly sessions delivered has increased by 134 per cent.

James Taylor
BS4S programme manager
Football Foundation
Whittington House
19-30 Alfred Place
London WC1E 7EA
Tel: 0845 345 4555
james.taylor@footballfoundation.org.uk
Charity no:1079309

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.