Health and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Official Report 616KB pdf

---

Sport for Everyone

The second item is a round-table session on phase 2 of our inquiry into sport for everyone. We have just over an hour for the session and we have a number of guests with us, who are very welcome. I will introduce myself, then we will go round the table and everyone can introduce themselves.

My name is Neil Findlay. I am a Lothian MSP and convener of the Health and Sport Committee.

I am Clare Haughey, the MSP for Rutherglen.

I am Alan Johnston from Senscot, where I am the sport and social enterprise co-ordinator.

I am Tom Arthur, the MSP for Renfrewshire South.

I am Katherine Byrne, policy manager at Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland.

I am Malcolm Dingwall-Smith from sportscotland.

I am Alex Cole-Hamilton, Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh Western, and my party’s health spokesman.

I am Alison Johnstone, an MSP for Lothian.

I am Kenneth Ovens, chair of the Scottish Association of Local Sports Councils.

I am Ivan McKee, the MSP for Glasgow Provan.

I am Brian Whittle, an MSP for South Scotland and my party’s spokesman on health, education, lifestyle and sport.

I am Allyson McCollam from public health in NHS Borders. I am here on behalf of a group of partner organisations that have made a joint written submission.

I am Maree Todd, an MSP for the Highlands and Islands. I apologise for my late arrival—I came down from Orkney this morning.

I am Ewen McMartin, Volunteer Scotland’s disclosure services manager.

I am Colin Smyth, an MSP for South Scotland and my party’s spokesperson on public health and social care.

Thank you. We will try to keep the discussion as free-flowing as possible, so please indicate to me if you want to contribute. Members will ask a few questions as we go. We begin with Clare Haughey.

I welcome all the witnesses. I will kick off. Can you provide us with examples of where sport has made a difference to communities or individuals, and tell us what evidence there is to show that it has made that difference?

I am speaking as the chair of the Scottish Association of Local Sports Councils, but I am also treasurer of clubsport Berwickshire. One of our principal aims is to support athletes at the various levels, from the very local level to international level. We award grants according to the level. We ask them to supply us with information about how successful they have been after having received that money. We also support clubs whose facilities require upgrading, and we get feedback from them on how successful their projects have been.

Where do you get your money from?

We get our money from Live Borders, which is a leisure trust. There are four sports councils in the borders—clubsport Berwickshire, clubsport Ettrick and Lauderdale, clubsport Roxburgh and clubsport Tweeddale—and they are all given a percentage of the money from the pot, depending on the size of the population in the area that they administer.

Is that money received direct from the local authority?

It goes from the local authority to the leisure trust, then the leisure trust gives it out.

The 500,000 people who have heart and lung conditions or who have suffered a stroke often aspire not to participate in sport, but to be physically active, which is hugely important in secondary prevention of further stroke or heart attack, or exacerbation of lung conditions.

We know that there are enormous barriers to those people being physically active. Just last week, the Scottish household survey produced evidence that only 39 per cent of people who are living with long-term health conditions are able to be physically active, against the national average of 79 per cent. I want to highlight to the committee how important physical activity is to many people who are living with long-term health conditions. Although sport is important, it is very much a subset of that overarching physical activity.

I echo that in respect of the sport social enterprise network of about 140 organisations that I represent. It is as much about physical activity and the intention to make a difference to people’s lives as it is about sport. It is hard to pick out one particular organisation. There is the issue of affordability, as well: we need to make sure that people and families can afford activities.

I will continue on that theme—physical activity and the importance of widening access to it. In addition to the sports activities in the Scottish Borders that my colleague referred to, we have a number of initiatives that are promoted through partners whom we need in order that we can engage with some communities who might not be as able to access opportunities to be active. The initiatives include specific referral routes for people with long-term health conditions, and they include many more community-based activities in village halls and in local centres, which are very much appreciated by people who do not have access to leisure facilities, with transport being a particular issue in the rural areas.

We hear a lot of positive reporting back about improvements to people’s wellbeing, reduction in social isolation and increased confidence. That applies across a wide age range, including older people. The understanding that sport and physical activity are closely interlinked is really important; some people become physically active then move on to being more engaged in formal structured sport of some kind. However, for a lot of people it is the increased level of physical activity that has the major impact.

At national level, we are seeing growth in the big programmes—in governing body club membership and in active schools membership—and in the physical activity benefits and the health benefits that come from that.

At the micro level, we are beginning to see a lot of interesting work. For instance, Dalry community sport hub worked with 10 unemployed people to build up their skills. Of those 10 people, five of them went on to college, three secured places, several of them started volunteering and a couple of them have jobs now, as a result. There are large-scale health benefits, but we should not ignore the smaller benefits that come from communities looking at new and innovative work.

A lot of work is going on around sport for change, which the committee will be aware of. Sport for change is a good way of demonstrating the difference that sports clubs and community clubs can make in relation to things such as employability and social inclusion. There are projects addressing homelessness, for example. The sport for change research that has recently been undertaken and the work through sportscotland, which is taking a leadership role, can only be better for communities and population health.

The committee is carrying out an inquiry into sport for everyone, so we are keen to highlight good work that is being done. What is the recipe for success in getting people physically active? I take on board Allyson McCollam’s point about physical activity and sport.

To pick up on Allyson McCollam’s point about the importance of community-based support, we have about 60 groups across the country providing physical activity in a variety of forms. The groups are very much led by the local community and meet local needs. The groups might provide, for example, a walking group or a gym-based exercise class that is led by a qualified exercise instructor who can support people with health conditions. They may, for example, provide seat-based exercises for people with disabilities and older and more frail people.

One of the keys to success is very much local peer-based support—people being able to go to groups with other people who are experiencing similar health conditions and being able to build up social networks as well, which is vital in keeping them attending regularly.

I will follow the theme. One opportunity for communities to work out which physical activities they would enjoy is participatory budgeting. A pilot on that with the Burnfoot community in Hawick—Burnfoot is an area of long-standing high deprivation—was quite astounding. Although the funding did not have many conditions, many applications were related to physical activity and opportunities for particular age groups or within certain settings. They included a boxing-club breakfast for kids in school and an application to purchase bikes and provide cycling classes for children who did not have those opportunities in their families. The principle behind the pilot was striking, to me; it was important to give communities the resources to make choices about the initiatives that they would like, and not to constrain the range of activity to what we might think is preferable for that community.

I will go on and say what I failed to say at last week’s meeting, about how we speak about “sport for all”. We have to be careful, because although a lot of physical activity leads on to sport, the majority of people who are physically active are not doing sport. That is why I asked last week about what we mean by “sport”. As we do our investigation, we have to bear that in mind. For me, sport is competitive physical activity, and the majority of people do not do that. Jogscotland, for example, is physical activity—it is not sport. Aqua aerobics or a class in the gym are not sport—they are physical activity.

Is it your view that activity is not sport if there is no competitive element?

Correct; sport is competitive activity. Tell me I am wrong: show me an example where that is not true.

I play golf, badly. I do not play competitive golf. Therefore, that would mean that I do not play sport.

I disagree. You do play sport: you try to beat the course every week.

What do other people here say? Tell Mr Whittle that he is wrong. [Laughter.]

Sportscotland takes a wider view of sport. For instance, in jogscotland if a person runs five kilometres every week, we would say that the person is competing against himself or herself to bring their time down. People do that activity for themselves, and it is sport.

Different people view sport in different ways. The Scottish household survey says that 52 per cent of adults and 66 per cent of children have played sport in the past four weeks. That is the majority of people, but I agree that sport is not the answer for everyone, particularly when we are trying to get inactive people to be active.

Clare Haughey asked what is the secret to getting people involved in activity. The answer is that there is no secret. School environments and active schools are involving children and young people more in the planning of sport and talking to them about what they want to do. Similarly, the community sport hub model is not a programme that is imposed from above; it is based on understanding what works in each community. We heard about that from Glasgow Life at last week’s meeting.

Particular groups face barriers to sport—for example, people with disabilities or older people. Each individual sport needs to understand the barriers and what can be done. Sportscotland has been undertaking that work, but there is more to do.

I will pick up Brian Whittle’s point about whether physical activity is sport. As a surfer and a scuba diver, those are sports to me, but I do not compete. Anyone around this table who is a runner will run for pleasure and fitness. Running is a sport—we do not go to any section of a department store other than the sports section to buy our running gear.

The competitive edge speaks to a wider issue. We heard at the start of the meeting that only 38 per cent of people with long-term conditions engage in any physical activity. That chimes with the experience on our field trips—in particular, to the Millennium centre in my constituency, where one person said that they are not engaged in sport because of embarrassment about being overweight and thinking that they would look silly in a track suit.

There is also slight anxiety about the competitive nature of sport. We all have horrific childhood memories of being forced to compete and coming off badly. That is a barrier. I contend to Brian Whittle that competition has its edge, but the elite aspect of sport can be inhibiting. I would be really interested to hear the panel’s views on whether the elite aspect is a barrier—or a perceived barrier—to participation in physical activity.

10:15  

There are not many Official Reports that have sentences that start,

“As a surfer and a scuba diver”. [Laughter.]

Would anyone like to comment on what Alex Cole-Hamilton has said?

I would like to comment—I am actually trying to help here. Competitiveness in sport, especially when people are young, is a massive barrier to long-term participation in sport. That is where I am. Alex Cole-Hamilton will not be surprised to hear me say that I do not mind listening to his opinion before I tell him why he is wrong.

We have highlighted an issue, in that our investigation has not nailed down what sport is—

It is a spectrum.

For me, the fact that there is a variety of opinions on that question is an issue as regards what we are investigating. In my view, being physically active is what we should be looking at.

I want to raise the issue of funding and where we should put the money. We have heard from Allyson McCollam about money that goes to community projects at the grass roots. Throughout our deliberations, the criticism has been made of sportscotland that it concentrates too much on the elite level at the expense of grass-roots sporting activity. That criticism might or might not be legitimate. I would be interested to find out from the panellists whether they think that we are putting money in the right places to get more people active.

I mentioned sport for change, through which a large piece of work is being done to look at sport and physical activity. Organisations including the Robertson Trust are looking to fund activity that is not just about elite sport. Mr Whittle’s point about competitiveness is important, but there are also the fun and social interaction that those organisations are keen to encourage. Sportscotland is starting to recognise that it is important to fund those aspects.

Yes—but we are trying to get at whether sportscotland is putting enough money into those aspects. Is the balance wrong?

At the moment, sportscotland is not putting enough money into that, but I would like to say that it is trying to address that.

This has been a great discussion. I would like to get the panel’s reflections on what the objective is. There is the proportion of adults who meet the physical activity standard—

Could I stop you there, Ivan? There are people who would like to respond to the funding question. I will bring you after that.

No problem.

The SALSC works with all the local sportscotland councils throughout Scotland, of which there are currently 38. We continually hear from them that the amount of money that they receive is decreasing every year because of pressures on local authorities and leisure trusts. Some sports councils are very good and have addressed the situation by looking at different ways of raising funds—for example, by working with companies to get sponsorship and so on—but one or two have decided that they cannot continue as they would like in supporting athletes and clubs. That is down to the pressures that they are being put under.

I am not sure whether this is a direct answer to the convener’s question, but it will not surprise the committee to learn that, from a public health point of view, I am particularly interested in the inequalities focus. One of the tensions that we are aware of locally is that the fact that the sports clubs and the trusts have a responsibility to maintain the facilities and premises that they have oversight of sometimes narrows the opportunities for them to engage with the wider community and provide opportunities for a range of community groups. There is an issue to do with overhead costs and the need to keep membership levels up. Maintenance of infrastructure is obviously important, but there is sometimes a tension between that and our efforts to stimulate wider engagement with physical activity for the whole population.

That is not insurmountable, but it is hard to quantify where the balance of the resources should go. It is easier to identify what is spent on sports facilities than it is to identify what funding goes into promotion of physical activity, because it is so diverse and is accessed and promoted through a wide range of funding streams and initiatives, which might not be badged as being directly about physical activity and might use the funding as a way to build skills, encourage volunteering and combat isolation. A lot of unintended benefits come through a lot of other routes.

Is there a deliberate policy to skew funding to benefit areas of most need?

There is not sufficient skewing. It is very difficult to do, but it would definitely be good to see more of it.

Funding is a systemic issue, in the sense that it extends beyond national health service care. After someone has had a heart attack or a stroke, or when they are diagnosed with a lung condition, they are provided with an NHS rehabilitation programme. Physical activity is a core component of those programmes. People who can access rehabilitation and complete the programmes are far more likely to be physically active months later and to sustain the benefits of that, but provision of rehabilitation is patchy among the health boards. We recently conducted a survey of pulmonary rehabilitation provision across the 14 regional health boards and found that there is capacity for only about 9,000 people. We estimate that around 69,000 people across the country would benefit hugely from such rehabilitation.

The committee will be unsurprised to learn that I have a different take on sportscotland’s spend. The majority of our budget goes on grass-roots sport, rather than on performance sport. I have followed the committee’s evidence taking, and I have heard a lot of references to the good work that the active schools programme and community sport hubs do. Those programmes are funded by sportscotland.

In addition, we put money directly into clubs and coaches. We invest directly in 122 clubs, and we direct funded 3,300 coaches last year with subsidies for them to take coaching qualifications. We also put money out through the awards for all programme and facilities.

The committee has heard evidence about whether money goes directly to clubs or to governing bodies and local authorities for staff. There is a balance to be struck. We can underestimate the value that an individual supporting a club can add. Especially for volunteers, who are time limited, support from a professional is sometimes of more use than direct subsidy. It is also important to note that we represent only 10 per cent of overall public spending on sport: 90 per cent of the sports budget is spent through local authorities.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran has an excellent exercise programme for stroke rehabilitation in the community. There is fantastic evidence that it cuts readmissions. I just wanted to point that out.

I will take up Malcolm Dingwall-Smith’s point. We seem to be focusing on the sportscotland fund when the overall sports budget goes predominantly to councils—£500 million is spent that way. I wonder what the committee’s view on that is. Have we looked at funding in the round or have we focused completely on the sportscotland budget?

Yes, we have looked at funding in the round—several times. We have taken evidence from various people who have highlighted the huge impact that cuts to local government budgets have had on grass-roots sporting activity and the ability of trusts and local government to fund projects direct.

It is important that we look at funding in the round, because inequalities can probably be focused on more directly through local government funding and making it more targeted.

My question is related to that and goes back to what we are trying to achieve. There is a metric in the national performance indicators for the percentage of adults who meet the recommended level of physical activity. That figure has been in the low 60 per cents for a number of years. My question to the organisations that are represented at the table is this: do you see that as your primary objective, as one of your objectives or as an objective that we should not be focused on at all. Are other objectives more important? If you think that it is important, what are you doing to move forward with the resources that you have? We have talked about the 37 per cent who do not meet that objective, and in hard-to-reach and disadvantaged groups the percentage is obviously going to be potentially much higher. How does that figure in your focus?

That is hugely important to Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland. We have just launched a three-year initiative in which we will focus particularly on enabling the people whom we support to be more physically active in different ways. We will test new community support and we will pilot new ways of reaching more people and addressing some of the inequalities that Colin Smyth mentioned.

I reiterate how important physical activity is for the people whom we support. Not only does it help them to regain their lives—some people can be literally trapped in the house without sufficient support to be physically active—but people who are physically active are far more likely to participate in their community and build a network around themselves to self-manage their conditions. They are also less likely to be readmitted to hospital and to have to visit their general practitioner repeatedly, so there are savings to be made for the NHS, as well.

I had better come in quickly on the savings for the NHS, which is always a welcome message. We have heard quite a bit about rehabilitation, but I would like to highlight how important physical activity—and increasing it, especially among the most inactive people—is in relation to prevention. We know that a tidal wave of long-term conditions is likely to come at us if we do not do something soon, given the ageing population profile, the increasing prevalence of obesity and being overweight in Scotland, and the continuing low levels of physical activity among many people in various communities.

In the Scottish Borders, we are beginning to look more at the role of physical activity as a preventative measure. We are looking at introducing a diabetes prevention programme to target groups of the population who are likely to be much more at risk; physical activity is one of the main ways in which we can engage with that population and make an impact. We have run a very promising small-scale pilot that has already shown significant gains in terms of clinical improvements for the individuals in it, who have reported a lot of very strong improvements in their health and wellbeing, their social connectedness and their sense of control over their lives. We see that as an area in which there is huge scope for development. An inequalities focus in that work is absolutely critical.

At 9.30 this morning, the latest health survey statistics were released. You are right that, there is still no statistically significant increase in adult participation in physical activity, but there has been a small increase. However, there has been a statistically significant increase in children’s participation, with 76 per cent of children reaching the recommended level. It is interesting that there has been a particular increase in girls’ participation since 2008, from 64 per cent to 72 per cent.

We want participation in sport to increase by more than it is currently increasing. In our large-scale programmes, we are seeing growth in sports participation. The picture is looking pretty positive for structured sport, but that is against the backdrop of an ageing population and changes in lifestyles and culture. We need to look collectively at how we can work to address that and adjust the design of sport.

Brian Whittle talked about what does and does not count as sport. We are seeing more sports clubs offering different types of opportunities; they are offering a wider variety of activities and activities that are more likely to attract people in the door. I could reel off a list of examples, but I think that you have heard about a lot of them from our partners.

You mentioned large-scale programmes. Can you give examples?

Up to 290,000 children are taking part in the active schools programme, and for governing body membership we are looking at 770,000 members of sports clubs. Those are the kinds of things that we are doing.

One programme that appeared to be really successful was jogscotland, but it had its funding chopped. Why was that?

Jogscotland is being funded.

Yes, but its funding was chopped—it is now being funded via the Scottish Association for Mental Health.

It is being funded via sportscotland, as well. It has received funding from SAMH, but—

10:30  

Was that a reversal of the cut?

It was a decision to put the funding in. Initially, jogscotland was funded directly by the Scottish Government, then the money moved to sportscotland. There was then a reduction in the funding. It was intended that it would be reduced it and there was an understanding that that would happen, because we were considering the programme’s sustainability. We have been working hard with Scottish Athletics on that. We believed, and had discussed with Scottish Athletics, that by the end of the previous financial year, it would be in a position to carry on without that funding, so we put a little bit of money in as a stopgap measure. At the beginning of this year, it became apparent that Scottish Athletics would not be able to continue the programme without that funding, so we put funding back in.

Did that have nothing to do with political pressure?

A number of politicians wrote to us to say that they had had discussions with their local jogscotland groups, which told them that the programme was providing a valuable service and that it needed the money to carry on. They had identified the same gap. We welcome politicians taking an interest in local sport and raising the same issues as we heard about from Scottish Athletics.

Had that intervention not been made, would you have reinstated the money anyway?

Do you mean if the intervention by politicians had not been made?

Or if the Government, or whoever, was putting pressure on you.

The conversation that we had with Scottish Athletics indicated that the money was needed, so we put money in.

I will carry on with questions about the fact that there has been little change on achieving the latest recommended level of physical activity. Mr Dingwall-Smith spoke about a small increase in the number of adults who are achieving it and a more promising increase in the number of children who are. However, we seem to have been more or less stuck since 2008. What do we have to do to increase the figure? If we do not increase it, we will have a recommended level that far too many people are not achieving. Do you have any suggestions about what needs to change?

A really concerted effort across partners is needed on that. It is not just about sport; sport is a contributor to physical activity but not the only part of it. Physical activity includes active travel, active living, dance and play. All those different parts of physical activity need to come together. At the moment, there is a temptation to put the entire responsibility for that goal on sport, but all public sector organisations need to pull together with the third sector and the private sector if we are to make a real impact.

Sportscotland’s audit of the school estate showed that about 61 per cent of available indoor space in secondary schools is used during term time, which drops to 43 per cent during holidays. For outdoor space, the figure is even lower: obviously, there is a weather impact, but only 40 per cent of outdoor space is used during term time and the figure drops to 28 per cent in the holidays. We might expect that more spaces would be used more in the holidays.

Also, 73 per cent of the space that is used is under a regular extended let, and those lets are difficult for community groups to access. They require people to make bookings and to get money together for them up front. The proportion of casual use is pretty low, at 26 per cent. Why is usage so low? That space is a huge asset for us. How can usage be increased?

A regular extended let will generally be held by a sports club or a community group and does not necessarily require up-front payment. Nevertheless, you are right: the audit showed that the level of accessibility is high. The ability to book facilities at some time is high—something like 98 per cent of secondary school facilities are available at some time for community booking, although that availability is not necessarily consistent.

Outside school time, schools are run by local authorities or, in some cases, by leisure trusts or other operators, so the challenge is potentially about the booking management systems. How can people book a casual let? In some cases, it is not as easy to book a badminton court in a school as it is to book one in a leisure centre, which is clearly a problem if we are trying to encourage accessibility. That comes down to working with each local authority or operator on how the management system can be improved, rather than just assuming that schools are not available. It is about how they are managed.

You said that, if we are to tackle physical inactivity, there must be partnership working, but we do not seem to have quite cracked that yet, when it comes to access to the school estate. One reason why usage is low during the holiday period might be that janitors are on holiday. In this day and age, we must be able to get together to come up with a model that makes such facilities available all year round.

Part of the issue will be to do with availability, but it will also depend on the model to which the school operates. Quite a lot of the schools in the Highlands are run by High Life Highland, which I think the committee has taken evidence from. That model gets round the janitor problem, because it uses a much larger staffing base. The fact that the staff can move between locations means that it is not necessary to rely on a janitor unlocking the door. Use is of the model that involves having a single janitor who is responsible for unlocking the door is decreasing. We are seeing less of that.

It is a question of working across different local authority departments with whoever is responsible for running the school—a leisure trust or a different operator—understanding the needs of the community and understanding when it is useful to have a facility open. It is not always useful to have a facility open during the day even during school holidays, because there might not be demand for access from local sports clubs even though the school is potentially available.

I liked your question, Alison. We have hospital wards closing and airlines’ fleets being grounded because they cannot manage holidays, and you expect janitors’ holidays to be sorted out. The naivety of it!

The submission from NHS Borders talks about the school estate in the area being managed well when it comes to access.

I am afraid that I am not able to comment on that in any great detail, because it is not an area that I know much about. However, I am conscious that several new schools have been built, the arrangements for which have been much more flexible, so the issue has been factored in to encourage much more community use of the range of facilities. Looking forward, I think that the situation is more positive.

I would like to go back a level. Does the panel agree that the best place to start tackling health inequalities is in school, because we have a captive audience there? Do you agree that, if we are to invest in tackling health inequalities, that is the obvious place to start?

I also want to ask about the impact of the withdrawal of funds for compulsory free swimming lessons. I presume that you agree that, in order to participate in swimming, it is necessary to be able to swim. However, we know that about 40 per cent of kids go to secondary school unable to swim. If we are to tackle health inequalities, is the school estate where we should start?

We need to be aware of the limitations of that approach in rural areas. Although there are many opportunities in schools to improve health and to reduce inequalities, we also need to think about the family context and the community context. In the Scottish Borders, giving children more swimming lessons would not necessarily work, because not all of them have ready access to swimming pools at the weekend or outside school hours, simply because of the geography of the area.

I think that the approach should be more about emphasising the importance of physical activity for not just children but all members of the community at all ages and stages, because the family is a huge enabler of such activity and helps to set patterns. School can have an impact, but unless parents—and, indeed, grandparents and other members of the extended family—are directly engaged in the process, its effectiveness might be quite limited. If we were to adopt the approach that Mr Whittle proposes, we would write off quite a large proportion of the population, to whom we no longer have access in school and whose health could be significantly improved within their lifetime if we did other quite simple things.

Curricular sports activity is not the responsibility of sportscotland. That takes me back to the point that I made earlier: all the partners must pull together. The issue that Mr Whittle raises would have to be taken up with Education Scotland and local authorities. That is why it is important for all the various parts of the public sector to get together to discuss how to increase physical activity and participation in sport. Some of that work has been done in the national strategic group under the active Scotland outcomes framework. However, concerning the committee’s inquiry, the decisions that it takes and the recommendations that it makes, there needs to be an understanding that sport is a pretty complex landscape and that a huge number of partners are involved in the different aspects of it.

Allyson McCollam mentioned health inequalities. Do you come across inequalities in the work that you do? Are levels of participation—whether in volunteering, rehabilitation or particular sporting activities—lower among people from more-deprived areas? What have you done to try to tackle such inequalities? Do you even measure inequality? Do you know, for example, how many of the people who come to your activities are from the most deprived areas? Is participation simply about the number of people overall, or do you measure where those people come from?

Social enterprises that are rooted in the community do not gather a lot of statistics, so I am afraid that the information is more anecdotal. A lot of people look at things such as social impact, which I suppose is a different dimension. Most social enterprises are about working with people in deprived communities, sometimes because there is a lack of activity in a particular community—there could be an affordability issue, for instance. Social enterprises in this area are about addressing inequalities and ensuring that people have access to physical activity.

We asked people what gets in the way of their being more active and we identified that one of the main barriers is cost. Small costs can accumulate—people might have more than one child, or they might have to pay a bus fare as well as the entry fee to a facility. It is important not to underestimate that; even with some subsidy, cost can be an enormous barrier to people participating in sport.

The growing interest in walking as a social activity is therefore interesting and important. We have talked a bit about jogging and jogscotland, and about some other sports. The paths for all programme has been really significant in engaging people from a range of backgrounds in walking and making use of the environment around them, whether in a city or in a rural setting. In the Borders, we have at least 70 volunteers, who are supported by one part-time co-ordinator. Walking has a strong profile in the Borders, and there is a lot of engagement in it by a wide range of groups—which includes an increasing number of people with dementia—but we find it hard to gather the statistics that would give us evidence on which postcode areas individuals come from. People do not necessarily want to be monitored when doing an activity that is about enjoyment, pleasure and being active.

Our sports and leisure trusts also have difficulty gathering information in a format that would help us to look at health inequalities from a public health point of view. However, evidence shows where the greatest inequalities are likely to be; we know which communities in the local area are most affected by inequalities and low levels of activity. We can put different sources of information together, but we cannot always say which communities particular users come from.

Colin Smyth mentioned volunteering. I have a question for Ewen McMartin. Are there barriers to people from deprived communities coming forward to volunteer, or problems with the number of people who are available to assist in setting up organisations?

I am afraid that that is not really my area of expertise—I work on the disclosure service side of things. The wider organisation is doing work based on the protecting vulnerable groups scheme data, but I am afraid that I cannot provide any details about that.

I agree with Allyson McCollam that the appropriateness of asking participants for certain information depends on the programme. An inactive person who walks through the door of a community sports club does not want to be asked a wide range of monitoring questions.

We found that participation in the active schools programme is 11 per cent higher in schools with most pupils from the lowest 20 per cent of Scottish index of multiple deprivation areas than it is nationally in schools overall. One possible reason for that is that the majority of activity in the programme is free, so it is potentially more appropriate in those schools, whereas in other areas more young people might pay for activity outside the school environment.

In some of our other programmes, such as community sports hubs, there are lots of great examples of activities being provided for people who could not normally afford them. At the Jack Kane centre here in Edinburgh, holiday programmes are provided free, along with free meals to tackle the problem of holiday hunger. There is great work going on locally.

On monitoring, we do not have national-level data for that particular programme. However, the data that we have gathered on the active schools programme shows that the way that we are delivering it is working in deprived communities.

10:45  

I could not let the morning go by without mentioning that this is women and girls in sport week.

We have seen a huge rise in participation in some sports in Scotland. Participation in karate and dodgeball has quadrupled and participation in cross-country running, tennis and rugby union has doubled over the past five years. Does anyone round the table have any ideas about how that has been achieved and how it might be transferred to other sports?

I say to Brian Whittle that getting women active will have a massive impact on the activity level of whole families, and that of society.

Correct.

The stats about karate and so on relate to participation in those sports within the active schools programme. We did a huge amount of work through a programme called active girls, which worked with every secondary school physical education department to get a better understanding of girls’ activity and to take a really participatory approach to planning it.

We have also been looking at who is coaching sessions. Getting more young women involved in coaching helps to drive up the number of women, and especially young girls, who participate, because they see role models whom they can take after and approach. As I said, the latest health survey stats show the gap closing between girls and boys in terms of the number who meet the physical activity standards, which is great to see.

Within the club and governing body sector, governing bodies of a lot of sports that have been traditionally seen as male dominated—which was perhaps not seen as a problem a decade ago—are now really focusing on participation of women. As part of the equality standard for sport framework, which sportscotland runs, every sport looks at all its policies, procedures and culture and asks which groups are underrepresented in it and why. By using that approach, which covers not just gender but disability, socioeconomic inclusion and age, a lot of sports are now developing activities that suit audiences that did not previously attend their classes or clubs.

It is crucial that we become better able to identify where the gaps are and how we can best support people who are less likely to participate in physical activity or sport, and to tackle that as early as possible. For the people whom we support, that might be at the point at which they receive NHS care; for others, it might be when they visit their general practitioner with health-related issues.

My question relates to the convener’s question about volunteering. Brian Whittle was absolutely right when he said that we have a captive audience in schools and classrooms, but not every young person at school is adequately engaged. I am speaking from my perspective as someone who was a volunteer youth worker for many years, and as chair of the cross-party group on volunteering.

Over the past decade or so, we have seen a slow decline in youth work in this country—I mention in particular the closure of the community education department at the University of Strathclyde and the erosion of local authority budgets for detached and sessional youth work. In my experience, it is detached and sessional youth work that leads the hardest-to-reach young people to sport in the first place. Is that a rather bleak assessment? Are there examples of best practice in which youth work is flourishing in this country?

I can speak only for the Scottish Borders, where we have a vibrant youth work sector. YouthBorders works with the network of local youth work groups. Those groups work in close partnership with the council’s community learning and development service. That is all under the umbrella of our community learning and development strategic partnership.

We have just been through an inspection, in which inspectors spoke quite highly of the examples of good practice that they saw. Physical activity is one of the range of opportunities and skill sets that we would hope to offer young people not just for the benefit of their health, but in order to achieve a range of other positive outcomes.

Is the budget there going up or down?

I could not comment. I would be surprised if it is going up, but I do not think that it is going down too drastically.

I would be extremely surprised. Could you let us know?

Yes.

One of the indicators that is set for us by sportscotland is to encourage more young people to be involved in sport. We have taken it slightly wider than that, because not everyone takes part in sport or wants to take part in sport.

We need councils and member clubs to run sports. We actively encourage young people with different skills, for example in social media or journalism, to become part of a sports council and to learn how to run one. In fact, we now have young people involved in 12 of our local sports councils and they are doing great work for the people.

The trouble with sports councils is that because it is nearly all volunteers who run them, the average age is 60-plus. It is great to have a different view from 18 to 25-year-olds, which is the main age that we are looking for. They bring a different perspective on how sport needs to be run and what needs to be done with sport. We actively encourage people to become involved in that side of things.

Again, I am not well positioned to comment on funding for youth services in local authorities. In the past, a distinction used to be made between youth work on the one hand and sport on the other. There is more of an understanding now that sports coaches can be youth workers, and that youth workers deliver sport. We should not necessarily draw a distinction between them. At a strategic level, we work with Youth Scotland. However, Scottish Rowing is delivering a programme in the Firhill basin on the canal in Glasgow that engages young people who are disengaged with education and sport. The programme takes a youth-work led approach.

My experience of youth work is that the hardest-to-reach young people can be reached when positive relationships are established. Relationships are at the heart of youth work and, irrespective of the activity that is being undertaken, it is the relationships that germinate the interest. Relationships are important—they get young people to commit when they have perhaps never engaged or had staying power.

I am glad to hear that the distinction has been blurred between youth work and sport. If it was felt that sports coaches were the sole arbiters and deliverers of sporting education, that might have been a barrier. In fact, some amazing detached youth work is going on there, with youth workers starting street football, street hockey and late-night boxing, which introduce young people to sport who would never have had the courage or social inclusion to join a club or try out for a team.

That was a statement, not a question.

It was. Am I not allowed to make a statement?

You could finish by saying, “Am I correct?”

Or “Is that your understanding?”

Perhaps we could tie the issue of volunteers into the Commonwealth games legacy, and the extent to which the legacy is linked to an increase in the number of volunteers. At the end of the day, if you are going to raise the number of participants, you have to raise the number of volunteers. I am thinking specifically about a programme that worked particularly well, which was the club together programme. For the benefit of the panel, the programme paid for a part-time position—15 hours a week—in clubs. Malcolm Dingwall-Smith can correct me if I am wrong, but I think that it was funded by sportscotland, the club itself and private funding. The cost was about £7,500 a year. Again, correct me if I am wrong, but I think that that has led to an increase of about 400 volunteers into the sector and about 3,000 athletes. Was the increase in volunteers part of the Commonwealth games legacy?

Scottish Athletics ran the club together programme, which was very successful. It built the capacity of clubs, because growing a club needs the people who run it—coaches, administrators, safeguarding officers, treasurers and so on—to be able to increase capacity, deliver extra sessions and do the fundraising to support all that. Ahead of the Commonwealth games, Scottish Athletics took the conscious approach that a legacy would need the capacity to take on new participants. A lot of athletics clubs in Scotland have had good growth.

On the wider question about volunteers and the Commonwealth games legacy, active schools have had a 50 per cent increase in the number of volunteers in the past five years. Whether that increase can be linked directly to the Commonwealth games raises a question of attribution. I think that Scottish Athletics used the phrase, “Legacy is what we do every day”—it is about all the bits of sport that are built into increasing the number of people who come through the doors of sports clubs across the country and ensuring that the infrastructure is in place to deliver.

Similar to the Commonwealth games, 2012 was all about increasing the number of participants. With that target to increase the number of people who participate in activity, was the need for volunteers properly taken into account?

The answer is yes; you have given a great example of a sport that took that approach, and I know that it is not an isolated example. A large number of sports understood that they would need more volunteers if they were going to increase the number of people who played their sport. As I said, we actively qualify a huge number of volunteer coaches every year.

To support sport to grow, we need to support the volunteering arm. We do that in a number of ways, through coaching subsidies and providing training to clubs to ensure that they understand how to manage volunteers. That is important, and I am sure that Volunteer Scotland might have more to say on the matter. It is not good enough to have a volunteer walk through the door then leave them to it. A club needs an ethos that understands how to support a volunteer once they are in place.

Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland does not have sporting volunteers, but I make the point that recruiting and retaining volunteers is a challenge to organisations across various sectors. We are one of the biggest volunteering organisations, with a workforce of around 1,600 people. Even then, we have to re-recruit about 400 people every year because of the massive turnover.

We have invested hugely in supporting and providing training for our volunteers, but key for us has been identifying the motivation for volunteering in the first place and playing to that as a strength. If people are looking for particular skills and experience, we try to give them that. At the moment, we are working with Queen Margaret University, which has a new degree course on physical activity and wellbeing. We will work with second and third-year students to provide volunteer placements where they will help our service users to be physically active and to participate in community-based activities.

The panel will be aware that the committee has looked at the PVG scheme in relation to sports coaching, particularly in youth football. How does Volunteer Scotland view the current PVG scheme? Has it had any impact on volunteering?

About 266 sporting organisations access free PVG checks through our organisation; that figure includes the governing bodies that the clubs feed into. In the past year—certainly since January up to September—there has been a marked increase in applications for PVG checks, which are up by about 200 per cent. The clubs know that they have to do the checks and the volunteers are aware that they have to go through the process and are more than happy to do it. The Scottish Youth Football Association obviously had a huge increase in PVG applications, given the situation that it found itself in last year, but the Scottish Rugby Union experienced an increase of more than 400 per cent in the same period—January to September—compared with last year.

11:00  

What does your organisation put the increase in PVG forms down to?

The media coverage and what has had to happen—what organisations should be doing and what a regulated role actually is.

Are you suggesting that there were sports groups that did not know that they had to—

We are certainly working with a lot of sports organisations to help them understand what they should and should not be looking to PVG check.

Are you monitoring exactly who is currently putting in those applications?

Yes, we regularly do that, and I can provide the numbers to the committee. There is no problem with that. Those show where the applications are coming through.

That would be very helpful, because you have raised a bit of a concern for me that organisations perhaps were not complying with PVG disclosure.

There was certainly a lack of understanding, as has become apparent.

Who is responsible for ensuring that sporting groups and clubs have an understanding—

Well, understanding is their responsibility, but our organisation is there to support them, as is Disclosure Scotland. I can provide the details so that you can see where the numbers are.

I am very keen to have a look at those.

You said that there has been a 200 per cent increase in PVG applications overall.

Yes.

And there has been a 400 per cent increase from the SRU.

In the region of 400 per cent, yes.

I would contend that there has not been a 400 per cent increase in participants.

No, I would not have thought so.

Are you seeing similar increases in other sports?

There have been large increases in some other sports, yes. There is now an awareness; things are becoming more apparent and organisations are trying to get their houses in order.

If organisations are registering people for PVG who were not previously registered, and if they are doing that properly, with your guidance—if they are registering the right people, and therefore people who have no need to be PVG checked are not being PVG checked—we can only surmise that a large number of people who should have been checked were not checked.

Potentially, yes.

That is very concerning. I think that we need to get much more information from you about where applications are coming from, where the big increases are and why organisations were unaware that they had to PVG check people who presumably were taking part in regulated activity.

Yes, that may be the case. I can certainly provide the numbers—that is not a problem.

Given the information that you have just given us, Mr McMartin, how many people did not pass PVG checks?

I do not have that number in front of me.

That is a really important piece of information, which it is important for the committee to have quite quickly.

I would not be able to tell you who—

I am not asking for individual names; I am asking for numbers for each organisation.

Okay.

I am somewhat surprised that we found out this information in this way. The committee really needs to follow up on why that information was not volunteered by Disclosure Scotland, or whoever.

The information came to light only when we picked up on and dissected the data that we have had in this year.

But had Clare Haughey not introduced that line of questioning, we would not have known. Was it the intention of Disclosure Scotland to write to the committee?

It was certainly my intention to pass the information on.

Okay. We will most certainly write to seek that information.

If no one wants to raise any final issues, I thank the witnesses very much for their attendance. We will suspend briefly for a change of panel.

11:04 Meeting suspended.  

11:14 On resuming—