Sport and leisure play a positive role in promoting the health and well-being of people and their communities, with local councils continuing to work hard to provide these services.
About the Local Government Association (LGA)
- The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales.
- Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils to ensure it has the resources, powers and support to deliver the best possible outcomes so communities can thrive
Key messages
- Councils are responsible for supporting the provision of both formal and informal opportunities for communities to be active. They spend £1.4 billion per year on sport, leisure, green spaces, parks and playgrounds - making local government the biggest public funder of sport and leisure services.
- Local government is responsible for 2,727 public leisure facilities including 898 swimming pools, a third of grass pitches; 13 per cent of sports halls; and almost of fifth of all health and fitness facilities and the majority of the UK’s 27,000 parks and green spaces.
- Investing in the facilities that directly support the health and wellbeing of individuals is crucial to driving economic growth for the nation. The sport and leisure infrastructure provided by councils is relied upon by residents, schools, and voluntary sector organisations; and delivers crucial benefits to our national health system. For example:
- 72 per cent of schools use public pools to deliver their statutory responsibility for learn to swim,
- 85 per cent of young people learn to swim in a public pool,
- 75 per cent of grassroots sports clubs use leisure facilities to deliver social and sporting opportunities to communities.
- 66 per cent of NHS cancer rehabilitation services takes place in leisure facilities, swimming saves the health system £357m pa.
- Active adults take 27 per cent fewer sick days.
- The current public sport and leisure infrastructure is under pressure and not sustainable; two-thirds of facilities are past their lifespan. Ageing leisure centres are costly to run and contribute up to 40 per cent of some district councils’ carbon footprint. A 2024 ukactive survey shows 24 per cent of council areas are at risk of closing or reducing leisure services due to ongoing pressures from high energy and operational costs.
- Data from Sport England’s Active Places Power database shows that across the country more than 1,200 swimming pools have shut since 2010, a net loss of around 500 pools. Swim England’s ‘Decade of Decline’ report showed that almost 25 per cent of local authorities are already short of the water space they need to meet demand by at least one average sized swimming pool. Fourteen million swimmers a year would have nowhere else to swim without their local pool.
- We need a national Government strategy and vision for the sport, leisure and physical activity sector to support help drive up physical activity levels, reduce inequalities and deliver on the Government’s missions for the NHS, breaking down barriers, economic growth and clean energy.
Background
Swimming pools are a discretionary service and councils are not required to provide them but choose to do so in recognition of the significant community benefits that arise from being active. However, this funding has declined by £2.3 billion since 2010 due to other pressures on council budgets.
Local government faces severe cost and demand pressures, with LGA Spending Review 2025 analysis showing councils face a £8.4bn funding gap by 2028/29. Councils have been forced to focus their spending on meeting their statutory obligations, leading to a reduction in spending on universal and preventative services and a greater focus on reactive, demand-led provision. For example, real-term annual spending in culture and leisure services has fallen by £2.3bn since 2010. Rises in energy and staffing costs have been particularly significant for swimming pools, and lead to challenging decisions about pricing and subsidy. Yet price rises risk excluding the very parts of the community who will benefit most from being activity, and reduce their risk of needing to call on expensive health interventions.
The Spending Review will therefore be critical to the future of our local services and it must include significant and sustained increases in overall funding for councils. We are pleased the Government has committed to multi-year settlements because it would provide councils with stability, allowing for better long-term planning and investment in sustainable facilities.
The current quality of public sport and leisure facilities is not sustainable or consistent with the quality expected by the public, including the green credentials needed to tackle the climate emergency. Examples of transformation from the Swimming Pool Support Fund, and earlier pioneer work at Exeter’s St Sidwell’s Place, have shown that with the right resources councils are able to create sustainable facilities for the future. These new facilities also meet modern consumer expectations making them more accessible to wider parts of the community.
While the previous Government’s Swimming Pool Support Fund delivered via Sport England was incredibly helpful to sustain swimming pools in the interim, funding remains a real issue. Sport England and National Lottery grants, while valuable, are often oversubscribed and provide short-term support to councils, swimming pools and grassroots sports clubs. These funds are insufficient to address the scale of need, particularly for maintaining, upgrading aging facilities or building new facilities.
Public leisure facilities provide affordable opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to try sports and to develop a passion for them, this may result in attending spectator events and investing in sporting equipment which boosts the economy and creates jobs across the sector. There is a risk that the number of elite athletes the country can produce declines if we lose our national infrastructure. For example, UK Sport whose role is to focus on elite sport had a budget of £172.9 million in 2023, £82.7 million of which comes from the Exchequer. In comparison, Sport England spends £254 million in grant funding a year on public and grassroots sport and leisure.
Investing in public sport and leisure is of benefit to the public purse as well as to the nation’s health and wellbeing. The sector contributes to many wider social, economic and health outcomes. Including:
- Swim England’s Value of Swimming Report showed swimming generates £2.4 billion of social value each year. Swimming prevents 80,000 cases of ill health per year, helping reduce pressures on the NHS and social care system. Swimming has helped to reduce symptoms of anxiety or depression for 1.4 million adults.
- Swimming is associated with higher levels of wellbeing when compared to non-swimmers, with swimmers feeling happier, more socially connected and less anxious. Using the ‘Wellbeing Valuation’ approach, a 2014 DCMS study demonstrated that of all the sports included, swimming was valued the highest.
- As well as being a sport, swimming is an essential life skill and learning to swim is a national curriculum requirement. Currently just 72 per cent of children leave primary school able to swim 25 metres. The number of children that can swim 25 metres falls massively for children from less affluent families (39 per cent) or those from ethnically diverse communities (46 per cent Asian, 4 per cent Black children). Maintaining access to the facilities that support people to learn this skill is essential to reduce the risk of drowning deaths amongst our children.
- Public sport and leisure services provides affordable opportunities for 8.9 million users annually to be active and is especially important for users in more deprived areas who prefer to exercise in a leisure centre over other informal settings.
- It provides an estimated 585,000 jobs in the UK, providing opportunities for young people who make up a large proportion of the paid workforce: 45 per cent are aged 16-24 and 21 per cent are aged 25-34.
Contact
Zahraa Shaikh
Public Affairs Support Officer
Phone: 020 3838 4861
Mobile: 07591 353623
Email: [email protected]