UK Sport Chair, Dame Katherine Grainger, was pleased to appear before the Select Committee at its session on Tuesday 5 May 2020. This written submission builds on the oral evidence Dame Katherine provided and is broadly structured to address the specific areas of interest outlined by the Committee in its call for evidence to this Inquiry. The submission will focus on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nation`s Olympic and Paralympic athletes, as well as on their national governing bodies. It will outline what UK Sport has done to address the immediate impacts, as well as providing commentary on where additional support is needed to protect the high performance sport system so we can continue to harness the power of sport to enrich lives. - The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought the sport the nation knows and loves to a standstill. Competitive sport has been almost entirely suspended across the globe; top athletes have been unable to train other than on an individual basis; private, community and school sports facilities have been closed; sports clubs and sports development programmes have been unable to operate. - The sports industry is being hit hard by the impacts of the lockdown. Many Olympic and Paralympic sports face substantial financial challenges having lost millions in revenue. The vast majority of Britain`s sporting governing bodies operate on fine margins and small reserves and are highly vulnerable given the pressure COVID-19 is placing on limited resources. For National Governing Bodies (NGBs), lost sponsorship deals, reducing membership levels, and the cancellation of events and education programmes mean they have had to implement serious cost-saving measures and draw substantially on emergency financial reserves. - Meanwhile, top sportsmen and women across the sporting spectrum are having to find ways of maintaining form and fitness while at the same time coping with the uncertainty of knowing when regular training and competition will begin again. Most significantly for UK Sport, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games have been postponed until the summer of 2021. - Competitor nations have already had government commitments for financial support to get their teams and athletes to the Tokyo Games in 2021. Without a similar commitment for British athletes the risks to achieving qualification for the Games are significant. - As government guidance has developed over the course of the pandemic, UK Sport has been clear that the choice of athletes to return to training is a personal one. Every sport is different, and everyone`s personal circumstances are different and whilst clearly there are many athletes who are keen to return to training as soon as possible, there are those who will have genuine concerns or personal circumstances that make this challenging. UK Sport have been clear that sports put the welfare of athletes and staff the number one priority in considering any return to training and/or competition. - Olympic and Paralympic sports are facing real threats both to their immediate survival and their long-term future. There is a danger that, without the certainty of funding to carry them through the now-extended Tokyo cycle, four years of Government and Lottery investment will be wasted due to sports being unable to qualify for the deferred Games. - At present UK Sport estimates that around 250 British athletes are expected to qualify for the Games but have yet to do so because of the impact of COVID-19 on the cancellation of events across the sporting calendar. This is a huge number of athletes who urgently need confirmation that they, and their sport, will have the continued financial resources to both qualify for, and compete at, the Games in the Summer of 2021. - UK Sport`s Exchequer funding is currently committed up until 31 March 2021, which leaves sports with a significant gap in resources to complete the Tokyo cycle, given the Games have now been postponed to the summer of 2021. In view of this situation, UK Sport has asked the Government for an early and exceptional one-year commitment to a rollover of its current Exchequer funding settlement for 2021/22. This amounts to baseline funding of £53.4m from the Exchequer, plus an extension of the Government underwrite on our funding from the National Lottery. - As an arms-length body of DCMS, UK Sport has co-ordinated its response to Covid-19 in collaboration with Ministers and officials. The Department has been very open to engaging with us and our partners, who have had to make difficult decisions about their projects and staff as well as their own response to the pandemic at a national and community level. - Organisationally, UK Sport has adapted its corporate strategy to address these challenging conditions. A comprehensive reprioritisation exercise, which has led to a number of projects being put on hold, has resulted in savings of over 15% across FY20/21`s programme and admin spend which the organisation is subsequently able to redeploy to support the system in adapting to the current circumstances. - In strategy terms the organisation has set three high-level priorities to guide work in the months ahead under three work streams: protecting the highperformance system - NGBs, athletes and other partner organisations - during this time to ensure it survives and continues to thrive; working to address how best to help the system prepare for the resumption of activity; initiating activity to ensure the high performance sports system in the UK can play its part in helping society during the crisis. - There is a growing appreciation of the role that sport will play when normal life resumes, and Tokyo will be seen in many quarters as a landmark occasion in this respect, bringing the world together for maybe the first time since the start of the pandemic in a celebration of the human spirit. UK Sport therefore believes that it will be very important, both for national morale and the UK`s global profile, that the British teams are fit, healthy and well prepared when Tokyo 2020 finally comes around - albeit in 2021. - It is therefore of critical importance to secure clarity on funding for the coming financial year (2021/22). This will galvanise the UK`s high performance system to finish the Tokyo Cycle by supporting a great variety of sports and athletes to achieve their dreams at the Games, and in doing so uniting the nation in pride of British athletes` successes.
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