Sports: West Midlands

(asked on 25th July 2019) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans she has to make sport more accessible to (a) women and (b) disabled people in the West Midlands.


Answered by
Nigel Adams Portrait
Nigel Adams
This question was answered on 5th September 2019

Government’s strategy for sport and physical activity ‘Sporting Future: A New Strategy for An Active Nation’ aims to create a more physically active nation, where people of all ages and backgrounds can enjoy the benefits that sport and physical activity can provide. The strategy focuses on people in groups that are currently less likely to take part in sport and physical activity, such as women and girls and disabled people.

Our national sport council, Sport England’s strategy ‘Towards an Active Nation’ aims to deliver the aims of Sporting Future and has funded a number of projects aimed at supporting women and disabed people to be active in the West Midlands, including:

  • Street League, who were awarded just over £543,000 to support the growth and sustainability of their Dance Fitness programme in 5 cities, including Birmingham in the West Midlands.
  • Coventry Sports Foundation, who received over £7,000 to support the delivery of their #GoGirls programme at multiple sport centres across the city to engage female participants from deprived communities and minority backgrounds in activities including Zumba, Clubbercise, circuits, spinning, boot camp, swimming, netball and badminton.
  • Royal Mencap Society, who received over £1m from Sport England (2018 – 2022) to deliver the Round the World Challenge, which aims to support people with a learning disability to get more active in a fun and engaging way by turning hours of sport and physical activity into a round the world adventure. It is running from 10 locations in year 1, including the West Midlands.
  • the Sporting Sense programme, which runs in the Midlands, London and Yorkshire, supports adults and children who are deafblind and have complex communication needs. This project increases the number of people with multiple sensory impairments engaged in physical activity through direct delivery and upskilling the workforce. In August 2019, Sport England announced a further £1.3m investment for the evolution of the programme.

In addition, the Government is supporting the delivery of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, which will have the biggest para sport and women’s sport programme in Commonwealth Games history. It is the first time any major multi-sport competition will have more medal events for women than men. It builds on the incredible growth of women’s sport in recent years and offers a fantastic opportunity to further increase the profile of para sport.

Reticulating Splines