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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to Government grants statistics 2020 to 2021, published on 31 March 2022, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the Continuity Fund (UK Sport).

The department agrees objectives and KPIs for UK Sport’s grant funding and their board allocates funding in accordance with those objectives. The department and its public bodies deliver all grant funding in line with the Government Functional Standard GovS 015: Grants.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on Olympic and Paralympic sports in the UK, including the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The Continuity fund was set up by UK Sport specifically to help mitigate the adverse impact of Covid-19 on the operational and financial health of NGBs, and to help in navigating a significantly different operating environment. It was essential to ensuring that British sports and athletes arrived at the disrupted Tokyo 2020 Games in the best position possible and helped ensure that Great Britain and Northern Ireland won 64 medals at the Olympics and 124 medals at the Paralympics.