It was supposed to “inspire a generation” and leave a legacy of a healthier, more active population. Yet the promises that the 2012 London Olympics would boost sporting participation have not been kept, according to a new parliamentary report.
A lasting legacy of participation was a key part of the government’s pitch for the £8.8bn Olympic and Paralympic Games, including pledges to increase the number of adults participating in sporting activities. However, the cross-party public accounts committee said the promised benefits had failed to occur, with the proportion of adults participating in sport at least once a week actually falling in the first three years after the Games.
It also accused Sport England, the body handed the task of increasing participation, of not knowing the destination of two-thirds of £1.5bn in grants it paid out in pursuit of increased sporting activity – a claim disputed by the organisation.
The government changed course in 2015, focusing on local approaches to increasing participation and concentrating on the least active. It was, in effect, a concession that it had relied too heavily on the Games to deliver higher participation rates. However, the committee concluded that the change in course had still not resulted in a meaningful increase in national participation rates.
In one of its most concerning findings, it said that of £1.5bn in grants distributed by Sport England since 2016, the body only knows where £450m of it went – while the proportion of active adults increased by only 1.2 percentage points from 2016 to 2019.
The committee concluded that, despite spending £323m a year since 2015, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport – as well as Sport England – had made “little progress” in tackling inequalities and barriers to participation.
Nearly two in five adults in England do not meet the chief medical officer’s guidelines for recommended activity, it said. These state that, each week, adults should complete at least two-and-a-half hours of “moderate intensity activity”, such as walking or cycling, or 75 minutes of “vigorous intensity activity”, such as running.
Meg Hillier, Labour chair of the committee, who is also an MP in the east London borough of Hackney, blamed a “lack of vision and drive”. “After the short-term financial boost, there’s been precious little to show by way of legacy, even in my immediate area of east London where the 2012 Games were held,” she said.
Sport England pushed back against the report, arguing that activity levels were “at record highs” before the pandemic. It said that it did know which organisations had spent its grant money and on what, and was working with them to understand the geographic spread of the funds.
A spokesperson said: “Our Annual Active Lives data recently confirmed that, despite the huge disruption of the past two years, participation in sport and activity continues to recover, with children’s activity already back to pre-pandemic levels.”
A government spokesperson said: “Activity levels for young people have now returned to pre-pandemic levels and we continue to work with Sport England to invest in sport for all, having recently announced £320m for schools and more than £260m to build or upgrade thousands of grassroots facilities.
“We will shortly be publishing a new sport strategy setting out our ambition to continue to increase activity rates and will respond to the committee’s report in due course.”
