Capital investment of around £18 million is currently taking place in Liverpool to provide new or improved sports and outdoor education facilities linked to school and wider community use. This has resulted in the most significant investment in provision in recent years in the city. Liverpool City Council has a plan and is creating the infrastructure to ensure the new facilities are used to increase participation in physical activity overall in the city, but particularly in the most deprived areas.
A range of revenue sources are being used to provide as much free access as possible to facilities for young people. Associated work is also being carried out in conjunction with local health authorities to tackle childhood obesity, including improvements in the diet of children.
Scale of investment in Liverpool
Major investment in sports and leisure facilities is taking place in Liverpool to provide a wide range of facilities. Around £18 million is being invested through the Big Lottery fund and a range of other funding sources.
Planning and delivery of this investment has been helped by the integration of leisure and education services in the Children’s Services Directorate of a unitary authority.
Delivering increased participation
The big challenge now is to bring together all of the revenue funding to increase participation. One of the aims of the Children and Young Peoples Plan is to reduce childhood obesity and increasing participation in physical activity is a key element of this. The local authority and health authorities are working together to tackle this, linked to a range of other strategies including improving diets in schools. The City is investing £400,000 to ensure that all children have access to fruit and vegetables.
An infrastructure is being set up in the City to increase participation, dividing the City into four areas and appointing participation officers to work with schools in each of the areas. It is aimed to involve all 3-19 year olds in at least 2 hours of physical activity per week. Grants are being used to obtain as much free access to the facilities as possible. Funding is being pursued to employ community coaches. There is a need to train additional people to increase the supply of community coaches and this is being linked to employment and training initiatives in the City.
Sustainability
The long term revenue consequences following the capital investment in new facilities is a key issue. In recent years, leisure facilities have been lower priorities for local authority revenue funding. There are tensions between the need to recover revenue costs through charging for services and the desire to increase participation as part of health initiatives. This particularly impacts on families whose income is just above the amount where they can obtain concessionary use; participation in sport and physical activity might not be their highest priority.
Cooperation will be needed between school based and local authority run facilities to plan and manage availability of services in areas of the City.