Sport England has today confirmed that it is making up to £195m of funding available to help the community sport and physical activity sector through the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

The package is additional to any funding support provided by the Government and is made up of the following:

• A £20 million Community Emergency Fund, which will be opened immediately for local clubs and community organisations to bid into. Grants between £300 and £10,000 are available.
• A £5 million pot for existing partners to bid into if they are facing specific and immediate financial difficulty
• An additional £55 million to support our sectors during an ongoing period of restrictions, to fund new and innovative ways to keep people active and then, when the period of restrictions is over, to help organisations get back to business and adjust to a different environment
• A £115 million rollover of current funding into 2021/22 to give long-term certainty to over 100 well established partners who play a vital role in the delivery of sport and physical activity in England.

Alongside this, given the cashflow concerns in the sector, Sport England has also agreed that it will consider requests to release six months of the coming year’s funding (50% of awards) to its partners, meaning additional funding will be available sooner.

Sport England is a major funder of sports National Governing Bodies (NGBs), including Table Tennis England, and the package follows its recent decision to offer major flexibilities to those who currently receive funding – including the ability to change timings, KPIs, targets and conditions, and redirect money to new activity in response to Covid-19. It has been drawn up following significant consultation with organisations across the sport and physical activity landscape in England.

Table Tennis England Chief Executive Sara Sutcliffe said: “These are challenging times for society as a whole and the sport sector is no different to any other in that regard. Sport England has stepped up to the plate with a comprehensive and joined-up approach to help the sector through this period and we are immensely grateful that they have acted swiftly and decisively.

“Our staff will evaluate what this means for our sport in particular and we will communicate with our clubs and other key stakeholders in the very near future to help them understand the help that is available to them.”

For more details about the package, click here

Sport England CEO Tim Hollingsworth said: “As the body responsible for the growth of sport and physical activity at a grassroots level, we have an important role to play both in ensuring that we support those with short-term cashflow concerns and immediate loss of income, as well as those facing medium and long-term survival challenges and financial difficulties.

“We want the sector not just to come through this crisis but to be in a position to thrive again in the future and when added to the funding made available by Government this package will ease the pressure on a huge number of the organisations who are central to that.”

** Table Tennis England’s Be TT and Satellite Club funding were both due to launch this month. In light of the current situation with Covid-19, we are currently reviewing how the Be TT programme for this year is best positioned to enable us to provide the right type of guidance and support to benefit clubs and leagues when table tennis is back in action. We will aim to announce details of the Be TT programme for the 2020/21 season over the next few weeks.