Football: Wales

(asked on 31st March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what criteria her Department used when determining the recent allocation of funding for grassroots football facilities in Wales.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 19th April 2022

The UK Government has invested £1.3m to improve and upgrade grassroots facilities across Wales this year. The 17 funded projects include grass and artificial grass pitches, changing rooms, floodlights and other infrastructure to make a real difference to communities across Wales. The Government has committed another £205m to multi-use grassroots facilities UK-wide between 2022 and 2025. Further investment into Welsh grassroots sport will be set out later in 2022, so that even more clubs and communities can benefit from access to high-quality pitches and facilities.

The Football Association of Wales (FAW) distributed this year’s investment on behalf of DCMS, inviting and assessing over 300 expressions of interest before awarding funding to the 17 successful projects. Projects were selected using a range of criteria - including their ability to deliver improved access for women and girls, disabled players and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, as part of the government’s ambition to level up access to facilities across the UK. At least 30% of the projects will benefit a sport other than football and at least 50% of the investment is being delivered in the most deprived areas of Wales, based on their Indices of Multiple Deprivation Ranking. Projects were also assessed on their deliverability and capacity to start work as soon as possible.

The Welsh Government and Sport Wales were represented on the advisory panel, which the FAW assembled to support their decision making. I have also met with my Ministerial counterpart in the Welsh Government to discuss the programme.

Projects across ten local authority areas in Wales have received a share of this year’ funding. Details of all projects are available on GOV.UK.

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