Select Committee Report on Swimming

[crawler]

The ASA website summarises the report published about the future of UK provision of pools, etc.
It looks as though the full report is available on the Houses of Parliament website at:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmcumeds/418/41802.htm

This should be of interest to anyone with a desire to see swimming expanded in the UK, anyone comment on any key points once they've read it (i.e. I haven't yet..)

[Chris]

Paragraph 19 - Policy & Strategy:

19. As well as the modernisation of existing pools, the ASA also sees a need for new 50 metre pools in England for elite swimming. An objective is to have at least one eight lane, 25 metre pool with adequate spectator support in each county, and to increase the number of 50 metre pools in line with provision in other comparable countries. It was, however, not readily apparent from the evidence given by the ASA that it had a firm and practical strategy for delivering this national programme.

That speaks volumes to me. Lots of ideas but no concept of how they might be implemented ...

[Chris]

And another interesting one, Chapter 20 - Delivery Mechanisms:

In order to achieve the aims of ASA's and Sport England's programmes, Sport England has awarded Lottery funding to swimming, covering the period from 1997 to September 2001, of £220 million. Exchequer funding of £0.5 million is being provided to elite swimming this year through UK Sport and Sport England. However, following the poor medal tally of swimmers at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, swimming has dropped from a priority 1, to a priority 2 sport. Funding, from the World Class Performance, Potential and Start Programmes, has been cut from £11.2 million (over the period 1997 to September 2000) to £8.5 million (to cover October 2000 to March 2005). This policy, while rewarding success at international competitions, ignores the possibility that low levels of achievement might be best tackled by long-term investment rather than punitive cuts.

[Bazza]

Originally posted by Chris
Paragraph 19 - Policy & Strategy:



That speaks volumes to me. Lots of ideas but no concept of how they might be implemented ...

:mad: That's incredible - cut from £3m/yr to £1.8m or something. Surely a poor performance suggests we need financial support, not less money!!:confused:
Where does all the extra money go? Football?!?!:(

[Chris]

As long as everyone wants to watch other stuff on tv, swimming's never gonna get the money it deserves. Not unless the swimmers take over the country ....... ;)

[Chris]

I'm a little surprised that this posting is getting a few more comments.

Obviously the Government are totally clueless when it comes to the development of swimming in the UK. The report mentions the parties that were responsible for this report (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmcumeds/418/41810.htm) and there are a number of reasonably useful people that had an input.

What did you think of the points they noted? Have they identified all the problems that are holding back the development of the sport in this country? More importantly, will this report have any effect on the funding?