Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what support has government provided to grass roots rugby in encouraging the participation of young people.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, including children and young people, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities.
The Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding each year. Sport England’s work focuses on increasing participation in grassroots sport, including rugby, providing more opportunities for young people to be active.
Sport England provides long term investment to the Rugby Football Union (£13.9 million from 2022-27) and Rugby Football League (£11.9 million from 2022-25), the National Governing Bodies for rugby to support grassroots participation.
Since last summer, the Government has also provided £6.7 million into the Women’s Rugby World Cup Legacy Programme Impact 25 which has benefited 850 clubs across the country. These clubs have received investment which goes towards supporting girls of all ages to get involved in rugby.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to support the provision of cricket clubs across local communities.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government has demonstrated its ongoing commitment to supporting grassroots cricket through its recent announcement of funding for the England and Wales Cricket Board to build two new indoor cricket domes in Farington and Luton.
This funding for cricket domes is in addition to the £400 million to transform facilities across the whole of the nation which was announced following the spending review. As part of this funding, 40% of projects across the UK will be required to benefit a sport other than football, including cricket, basketball and rugby league. We are now working closely with sporting bodies and local leaders to establish what each community needs and then set out further plans.
The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery Funding. This includes long term investment to the ECB, which receives up to £11.6 million for five years to invest in community cricket initiatives.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential economic impact of (a) cultural and (b) creative industries on regional growth, including in the North East.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
There are thriving creative businesses and cultural organisations across the UK and they play a key role in regional growth. Unleashing the full potential of our city regions and clusters across the UK is a core objective of our Creative Industries Sector Plan. The Sector Plan includes a universal offer to drive growth in the creative industries in any place in the UK, outlining new measures to break down barriers such as access to finance, supply of skills, and new support to kickstart innovation.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what her planned timetable is for the appointment of board members of the independent football regulator.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Three board members are already in place at the IFR. A robust, transparent process to recruit a further four appointees, to complement the existing talent, opened on 12 November. Applications are due on 10 December and the full details are on the public appointments pages of Gov.uk:
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate has been made of the number of (1) grass and (2) artificial football pitches in (a) England (b) Greater Manchester and (c) Oldham for each year since 2015.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
According to Sport England’s Active Places database, as of December 2025 there are 59,794 grass football pitches and 6,634 artificial grass pitches in England. In Greater Manchester, there are 1,796 grass football pitches and 380 artificial grass pitches. In Oldham, there are 113 grass football pitches and 30 artificial grass pitches.
The Government is investing £98m in grassroots facilities across the UK through the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme in 2025/26, funding projects such as new artificial grass pitches, grass pitch improvements and pitch maintenance equipment.
Asked by: Harpreet Uppal (Labour - Huddersfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the reduction in local authority spending on youth services since 2010 on those services; and will she consider embedding minimum sufficiency benchmarks within the forthcoming National Youth Strategy.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This Government fully recognises the importance of youth services to help young people live safe and healthy lives, and we are committed to giving all young people the chance to reach their full potential. This is why we are launching a new National Youth Strategy, to set out a new long-term vision for young people and an action plan for delivering this.
The Local Youth Transformation Pilot is a new programme to support local authorities to meet their statutory duty, through investing £8 million over 2025/26 to support 12 ‘Pathfinder’ local authorities to start to rebuild a high-quality offer for young people and transition back to local youth services leadership. The pilot will test ways to rebuild local authority capability to ensure a local youth offer which addresses the needs of young people and supports government priorities.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to increase participation in grassroots sports, including in communities with lower activity levels.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone should have access to, and benefit from, quality sport and physical activity opportunities.
In England, the Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sports through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding in areas of greatest need to tackle inactivity levels through community-led solutions.
The Government is also investing £98 million in grassroots sports facilities to support increased participation across the UK via the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme in 2025/26. Projects funded through the programme include new artificial grass pitches, changing rooms and pavilions, and floodlights. The Programme has a specific objective to target at least 50% of investment into the 30% most deprived areas, based on a combination of deprivation and inactivity levels.
The Government has announced £400 million will be invested in grassroots sports facilities across the UK over the next four years to ensure we can continue to deliver high-quality grass, artificial grass pitches and other multi-sport facilities in the areas that require them, in order to increase participation and allow people to be active.
Following this announcement, we are working in collaboration with the sport sector and local leaders to establish what communities need, before setting out plans on how future funding will be allocated.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment has been made of the potential impact of the Women’s World Cup and other major events on participation rates among girls and young women.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Major events have the power to transform communities and increase participation. The recent Women’s Rugby World Cup and associated legacy programme has contributed to a 35% increase in female age grade registrations in England rising from 17,700 places in 2022 to 23,900 in 2025.
Hosting the 2035 FIFA Women’s World Cup has the potential to be a transformational opportunity for women’s football, and for women’s sport in the UK more generally. Following the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022, we saw a 140% increase in participation among women and girls, with over 519,000 new grassroots opportunities created specifically for women and girls across England. Should the UK-wide bid to host the tournament be successful, we will work with partners to maximise its impact for the whole nation.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help support the long-term financial stability of local sports clubs and community leisure centres.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to supporting grassroots sport and ensuring everyone has access to leisure centres and sport clubs, which are vital spaces for people of all ages to stay fit and healthy, and which play an important role within communities across the country.
The Government has committed another £400 million to transform grassroots sports facilities across the whole of the UK over the next four years. We will ensure that this funding promotes health and wellbeing, and helps to remove the barriers to physical activity for under-represented groups. We are working closely with sporting bodies and local leaders to establish what communities need, before setting out further plans on how future funding will be allocated across the UK. This funding is on top of the £250 million that Sport England invests every year in grassroots sport in England.
The ongoing responsibility of providing access to public leisure facilities lies at local authority level, with funding levels set as part of the Local Government Finance Settlement. The Government encourages local authorities to make investments which offer the right opportunities and facilities for the communities they serve.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions her Department has had with sporting bodies about improving safeguarding across all levels of sport.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The safety and wellbeing of everyone taking part in sport is absolutely paramount. Sport England and UK Sport (DCMS’ Arm’s Length Bodies for sport) require National Governing Bodies (NGBs) to implement safeguarding policies and practices as a condition of public funding at grassroots and elite level, respectively. DCMS officials regularly meet with both organisations to discuss issues and ongoing work in this area.
The sport sector is rightly prioritising this issue. UK Sport has been working in partnership with the Home Nations sports councils and NGBs to assess and identify improvements to safeguarding systems across the sport sector. This project produced a report in June this year entitled Safe Sport, which includes a set of recommendations for sector-wide reforms. The five Sports Councils have committed to taking this work forward and are now scoping out possibilities and timelines for implementation of the report’s recommendations.