I suppose that my point is that affordability for all should be a key underlying principle for all major sporting events in Scotland. I accept that there are different business models, and you pointed out that there are tensions between maximising income and having accessibility for all. I am just suggesting that, as part of any organisation’s corporate and social responsibilities, whether it is organising a single-sport event such as a football game or a multisport event such as the Commonwealth games, some form of affordability check is done so that all sections of society are included. That should apply to the Ryder cup as well.
Are there any underlying principles that Glasgow 2014 used and which could be disseminated across Scotland—not, I should say, in a statutory way—for others to look at?
11:15
I hope that corporate Scotland will be listening to this talk about financial pressures—as, indeed, I hope the media will be. After all, there is no point in the Scottish team being wonderful and successful elsewhere in the world if they do not get the wonderful media exposure that they got for the home games.
Mr Stewart and Mr Arthur will be glad to hear that, for my last question, I do not have a story. It is quite often the case that shiny new facilities—and the facilities in Glasgow are fantastic—lead only to people who are already physically active being more physically active in nicer facilities. Gil Paterson made the point about Glasgow and the rest of Scotland but, for people who live in deprived communities in north Glasgow, some of these wonderful facilities in the east end of the city might as well be in Aberdeen—and I say that as someone who has been to Aberdeen Sports Village and thinks that it is fantastic.
Other partners will have to do the tracking exercise on the games’ legacy successes, but do you agree that that exercise should look not at whether people are being more physically active—although that is important—but at whether those who are not normally physically active are taking up physical activity? Do you agree that, when we do that, we should ensure that we close the inequalities gap that exists in society for those who are least likely to be physically active? The cabinet secretary was clear that baselines exist and we will be tracking forward from them. I know that you are not doing the tracking exercise, but would such activity be a key component of the legacy for you?
Convener and members of the Health and Sport Committee, thank you for inviting us to speak to the committee about the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth games. It feels strange to talk about the games in the past tense, but having witnessed 11 extraordinary days of sport and culture, we are in a position to look back and consider what we have achieved together. The games have changed us; they have changed Glasgow and Scotland and they have given the rest of the world a new understanding of the city, the country and our people.
We all have memories of the games, which will stay with us for many years to come: it might be Usain Bolt dancing to the Proclaimers at Hampden, it might be the cheers of “Uganda!” at the rugby sevens at Ibrox, or it might be the endurance that was shown by the road race cyclists on the final day of the games in appalling rain, when something like 240 cyclists started and half a dozen finished the race.
Whatever memory you take with you, we see widespread agreement that Scotland’s biggest-ever festival of sport and culture has been a huge success. The games made history; in sporting terms, nine world records and 142 Commonwealth records were set during the games. We had the biggest integrated para-sport programme in Commonwealth games history, and we had a groundbreaking partnership with UNICEF and the Commonwealth Games Federation, which so far has raised £5 million to put children first across the Commonwealth.
Our work on accessibility has set a new bar in sharing the excitement of sport. A £3 million investment to create permanent improved-accessibility facilities at Hampden was just one example of the many lasting accessibility improvements that came about as a result of the games.
We published a procurement sustainability policy and a position on human rights, and we were the first Commonwealth games to achieve ISO 20121 status for our commitment to the environment and sustainability. In so many ways we sought to set new standards for the Commonwealth games.
What sets Glasgow apart from other host cities is not just what we have delivered but how we have delivered it. We have worked incredibly closely with our games partners—the 1,500-strong team of people at the organising committee has kept people at the heart of our story—and throughout the journey of the games we have been inspired by the Commonwealth Games Federation’s values of humanity, equality and destiny. We have enjoyed incredible support from the people of Scotland, whether they volunteered as Clyde-siders, took part in a legacy project or bought tickets and cheered on the athletes. We have striven to maximise the legacy ambitions of our partners, and we have worked hard to make Commonwealth games athletes and the young people of Glasgow and Scotland an integral part of a world-class, community-relevant games that has made the people of Scotland proud.
The games have left an economic, social and sporting legacy. There is a wealth of evidence about the opportunities that have been brought about by the games, whether in jobs, in training, in new and improved venues, in community and cultural initiatives or in the increase in confidence and profile that comes with our hosting such a successful event. Our games partners—Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government and Commonwealth Games Scotland—will continue to assess the impact of the games long after the organising committee has packed up and gone home.
Glasgow and Scotland raised the bar. We created history. We did it in partnership, thanks to the incredible support of the people of Scotland and the Commonwealth. Everyone in Scotland should be very proud of what has been achieved, and we are ready to build on it in the months and years to come.
Thank you for inviting us here this morning. I look forward to taking members’ questions.
The built legacy is important. The immediate and obvious things are those that people see in the east end of Glasgow and all around the games venues, such as the new Emirates arena, the athletes village and the Clyde Gateway road. In my first week of working on the organising committee—that was almost six years ago—Councillor Archie Graham and the head of Clyde Gateway took me on a tour of that part of the city. The transformation beyond the games, which the games have inspired and driven, is huge and is only starting. Given the housing developments and other things that are proposed for coming years, a huge amount of development will continue in that area.
The effect does not apply just to housing. The M74 extension, which everyone in the room will know was agonised over for many years, was finally built. That was crucial to the successful delivery of the games, but it has also delivered huge economic benefits. Big areas that were derelict for decades now have industrial sheds and office buildings, and employers are coming to those areas to create work and hope for people who live there.
The games have been enormously transformational. The businesses involved will do business across Scotland and employ people in the vicinity. All that has been huge. We have seen the business benefit of the games for communities across Scotland. We have seen where tier 1 contracts went, and companies throughout the country have benefited from tier 1 contracts. We encouraged the companies that won tier 1 contracts to develop their local supply chains, and there is strong evidence that that has happened.
Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, which built the Emirates arena, has a huge supply chain throughout the United Kingdom but did not have a particularly strong supply chain in Scotland. It came across new suppliers for tier 2 and tier 3 contracts. The Scottish director of McAlpine has talked about the fantastic companies that it has worked with on the games, with which it will undoubtedly work in future. There are clear and lasting business benefits from a lot of that work.
On the second part of your question, on participation in sport, it is too early to be clear, particularly in relation to young people. There is anecdotal evidence that things have picked up significantly in the past couple of years, not just in the couple of months since the games.
In the lead-up to the games, people were aware of the games and excited about them. The fantastic new facilities were open a year prior to the games and have been in very heavy use. The additional 50m swimming pool that was built at Tollcross as a warm-up pool for the games has been set aside for elite athlete training and use by schools. It is solidly booked, but not at the expense of the 10-lane pool, which is also full every day. We can see the benefits coming through from a lot of the facilities. I understand that the committee is keen to see the data. We do not have it at this stage, but it is being collated by the Government and the council and will be published in the months ahead.
I think that the sport hubs are all being used extremely well. However, the information is anecdotal at this stage. I do not know whether Kenny Stewart has anything to add.
I completely understand why you are keen to understand the data that flows out of the process, but I am afraid that that is simply not the organising committee’s role. As I said, in a matter of weeks the vast majority of us will go home—in fact, the vast majority have already gone home.
Thank you.
To that, I add our work to put young people at the centre of the games. We have had a tremendously successful education programme, which we developed with partners, including the Scottish Government and Education Scotland. The programme has reached about 1 million learners across the Commonwealth, of whom 250,000 are in Scotland.
We have also seen some great smart and sensible procurement initiatives. For example, our host broadcaster training initiative saw more than 600 young people on relevant further and higher education courses, with more than 200 of those young people going on to roles in covering the games, which has created an entire new generation of young media broadcast professionals in Scotland.
Do we have an indication of participation levels? Has demand surged and have we met demand during and since the games?
It needs to be, from the point of view of the aspirations that the bid team set out 10 years ago. At that stage, it was clearly set out that the aspiration was to bring into physical activity people who had not been active in the past, to try to improve health and other factors in society. That needs to be a crucial part of the process.
How do we ensure inclusion in the education programme that Mr Stewart mentioned? How do we ensure that facilities are accessible to people with disabilities and impairments? For instance, are certain times set aside in the velodrome for people to do tandem cycling and other such things? I would hate the situation to drift back to where we were before, in which accessibility was an add-on. Maybe the International Olympic Committee needs to think about how it moves forward. How do we ensure that we remain inclusive and that accessibility is not just an add-on?
That is interesting from the perspective of the Olympic and Paralympic movements. Winding back the clock 20 years, para-sport was way down the agenda and was virtually invisible to the public. The work of the International Paralympic Committee in the past 20 years has created the phenomenal success that is the Paralympic games. The challenge for the Olympic and Paralympic movements is that the Paralympic movement is now so big that it might be almost impossible to integrate, even if they wanted to do that. I am glad that it is not my headache to work out how that could happen.
For the Commonwealth games, the integrated programme and the length of the games are set out by the Commonwealth Games Federation. The games must be completed within 11 days—an organising committee cannot just choose to do it over 15 days. The number of para-sport events is also laid down by the federation. It looks at a whole range of different initiatives when deciding on the number, but one factor is that the federation has some basic rules around international spread and the depth of the talent. Whether you are looking at para-sport or able-bodied sport, those rules apply.
11:30The federation sports committee will undoubtedly want to continue to increase the para-sport element of the games. How that is done in the context of the federation definition that the games shall only be 11 days, the standards that it sets for qualifying criteria and so on, and its requirement to have a good competition—meaning that representatives of at least three or four of the six regions and at least so many countries are needed—will determine to an extent how fast the para-sport part of the overall games grows. Para-sport has moved on; we were very keen to move it on and we pushed the CGF on a number of those areas. We also pushed for the inclusion of more women’s events—in shooting and in boxing, for example, and with the mixed triathlon. We were keen to see a broadening of the sport programme.
Of course, on top of that, the Commonwealth games has 10 core sports and a bidding city can then choose up to seven sports from a list of, I think, 16. Every organising committee tends to pick a slightly different mix. Judo had not been on the programme since Manchester. It was on the programme in Glasgow, thankfully, because team Scotland did brilliantly at the judo—as it did in Manchester. Tennis was on the programme in Delhi and lots of people have said to us, “Why didn’t you have tennis in your programme? You must have known that Andy Murray was going to be world number 1.” However, when the bid team was working on tennis, Andy Murray was still a hundred-and-somethingth in the world rankings, so we did not know that.
When a bid team bids for a games, it puts together a sports programme based on a number of different factors, but the sports programme at each games will also determine how much the para-sport programme grows over time. It is a complicated process, but it is all run through the governance of the CGF and its sports committee.
I should just say that, despite being different political entities, the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council worked really well together. That is another legacy that is well worth recording: if everybody gets together, we can make a big difference.
That is fine. Thank you.
I suppose that, as a Glasgow MSP, I should start by thanking the organising committee for doing an amazing job. Very well done. I should also say gently that you were in listening mode, and people moved on very quickly in relation to the proposal to use the Red Road flats as part of the opening ceremony: once the city moved on, we just moved on, and it was a wonderful opening ceremony.
My constituency office sits on Sauchiehall Street, and for the fortnight I saw there how the city changed. It was an amazing thing to see, and that change is still really relevant. Some of the main thoroughfares in Glasgow have still not seen a diminution of interest from tourists and visitors. It has been a wonderful experience and I cannot commend all the partners enough.
I have two or three focused—I hope—questions that are driven by personal experience. I got to go to one event. I never thought that I would go to see a female heavyweight weightlifting contest at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, but I did that and it was remarkable. I got a ticket the day before by turning up at a ticket booth in George Square, where I bumped into a neighbour of mine who was doing exactly the same thing. I am not just telling this story for the sake of it, I assure you, as my first question is on accessibility and affordability of tickets.
Is there scope for a national ticketing strategy for large-scale sporting events or similar major events? Are there lessons to be learned about how ticketing is organised and how tickets are made affordable and accessible, including at short notice, and can they be rolled out nationally? I accept that that would have to be done through local authority partners and other stakeholders, but do you believe that there is progress to be made in getting ticketing strategies right for other major events?
David Grevemberg and a number of other colleagues are on their way to the Gold Coast as we speak for the official handover of the transfer of knowledge programme. I think that we have written more than 80 transfer of knowledge reports, which are accessible to the games partners and are stored through the CGF’s transfer of knowledge programme. The reports will go into the detail—at every level, across the whole organisation of the games—of what we learned through that process.
The transfer of knowledge to the Gold Coast has been going on for the past two or three years anyway, through the co-ordination commissions and other events that have taken place. A very thorough process is in place to ensure that everything that we have learned from a Commonwealth games perspective gets passed on to the Gold Coast.
The important thing will be how we cement the relevance of the different bits of what we learned into how we plan and deliver major events in Scotland for the benefit of future world championships and other events that we host here. The national events agency and others are heavily involved in that process and I am confident that a lot of that knowledge will be successfully passed across.
Are you asking about participation at sports clubs and so forth?
I am not sure that we need to go as far as a national ticketing strategy, but through the transfer of knowledge from the games there will be a huge amount for people to learn in a number of different areas. Ticketing is one of those areas, and another is the food charter that we put in place. We did a lot of hard work over two or three years to ensure that the sourcing and quality of food at the games set a new benchmark for events in Scotland. There are a lot of different things of that sort that people will be able to turn to and see how we did it and ask whether it would work for them.
I caution that events are different. In particular, multisport events are very different from single-sport events in scale and in just about every other way. In a multisport event, the layers that are added on bring many more complications than exist even with a really big single-sport event such as the Ryder cup, which came to Scotland last week.
The most important thing is that the knowledge that developed through the national agencies and the games partners during the extended period of planning for the games is available to others, who can look at it and work out which parts of it are relevant to them and which are not.
We were keen to ensure that, demographically, we spoke to the entire nation. Other events are by their nature more exclusive and we approach them in a different way because we are talking to a different and specific audience, so we cannot have an approach that is too generalist. However, there are real things to learn that people who are involved a range of different events over the next few years will find valuable. Of course, communications will move on, and the way in which we all communicate with one another makes a massive difference when it comes to things such as ticketing.
The affordability of sports facilities, clubs and so on is a real challenge, but the barriers to entry vary across different sports. With some, you can literally buy a pair of trainers, turn up and get involved. With others, where more specialist equipment is used, the costs can be more significant. The velodrome has tried to get around that by hiring out specialist bicycles. It is not expected that everyone who comes along will be able to afford a specialist bicycle.
The most important thing that the organising committee did in that respect was an awful lot of work in advance to ensure that we had an incredibly affordable ticketing programme for the games. The big thing that we could do as an organising committee was to inspire people to get involved—we hoped that, when they got involved, the facilities, coaches and equipment would be in place. Our big task in many ways was to inspire people in the first place.
We did a huge amount of work as a partnership to agree the principles of our ticketing programme 18 months before it went live. The Government and the council were clear advocates for the most accessible ticketing programme ever for a games. We were the first games to have specially priced tickets for children. The entry price for every session of sport was set very low. For all sports, a concession ticket cost £7.50, and you could get into any sport with concession tickets. We worked hard at that.
We also worked hard at accessibility through, for example, not having a dedicated credit card provider for the games. Typically, in games around the world, the financial services sponsors always involve major credit card providers. With that comes exclusivity, in that you can buy tickets only with that credit card. A lot of people who tried to buy tickets for the Olympic games but who did not have a Visa card found that a really difficult barrier. About five years out from the games, we made a conscious decision not to do that.
Furthermore, when we printed our ticketing programme, we made big efforts to make it accessible through a lot of retail outlets. We accepted applications on a printed application form and we accepted a variety of payment methods beyond online card payments. People could send in postal orders or cheques, and although relatively small numbers of people did so, the important thing was that we made as many of those opportunities available as possible to as many people as possible. We spoke to as broad a community as possible, to try to get people really to want to be part of the games.
When they give evidence at future meetings of the committee, the games partners will be able to demonstrate—through, for example, sportscotland’s statistics—the ripple effect of the work done by the organising committee, with partner support, in communities over time.
I am impressed by the lengths that the organising committee went to and by the decision that was taken early on not to use a dedicated credit card brand. I do not think that we were aware of all of that. I certainly was not aware of those efforts to be inclusive.
Would you take that approach again? Is there anything else that we can do in addition to that to encourage wider participation? You went to great lengths to do what you did for a very small return. Are there any other ideas on how we can reach lower-income groups? Was it a question of those groups not having the money? Was the money spent elsewhere? Anyway, I admire your efforts to reach out.
A national events agency can communicate and share such things very effectively. From that point of view, we are in a good position. When it bids for events, Scotland takes a very effective team Scotland approach, and the different agencies involved, with EventScotland at the heart of it all, put Scotland in a very strong position.
Good morning, gentlemen. You have managed to do something that people have not done in other sports. We have talked about accessibility and the games’ inclusiveness stood out for me, because it was incredible. Para-sports were included in the programme, and not as an add-on, which happens in some other sports and in other venues. It was part of the natural programme. People with disabilities were seen as athletes in their own right, and rightly so.
The benchmark has been set very high, so how do we ensure that people with disabilities and the next generation of people who take part in para-sports are supported and have access to facilities nationally? Gordon Arthur mentioned the velodrome, which stood out for me because Neil Fachie is related to me and I am very proud of him and his achievements. How do we ensure that people who are up and coming have access to facilities?
I have had lots of emails from people who attended the various sports facilities who have mobility problems, who use a wheelchair, or who are deaf or hard of hearing. Every email has been congratulatory about your efforts and how you provided facilities. That is a “well done” from the people in the various communities who have disabilities and impairments.
I am aware that other international sporting commitments have to be factored in when considering where these various games are held. Disabled sport has almost become a victim of its own success. It was inspiring to see disabled athletes competing at the same time as able-bodied athletes and getting the same respect from the crowd but, given that disabled sport is such a massive movement now, how do we introduce it elsewhere without cutting away so many strands of it that it becomes not quite as inspiring or inclusive?
In the run-up to the games—and, indeed, during the games—there was an awful lot of talk about the legacy of the games. What do you see as being the main legacy of the games?
I am grateful for that information; it is very useful to get it on the record.
When we were looking forward to the games, there were thoughts about how you would engage people from local communities, including people who were not in work, in volunteering. The Clyde-siders programme was really successful. I suppose that a lot of people recognised the warmth that came from that community involvement. What steps have been taken to see whether those people can be involved—perhaps for their personal development—in future events rather than, at the end the games, simply saying to them, “That’s it over.”? How do you keep those people engaged and help them to move and build on their success?
We have not published the final figure yet. The accountants are still closing down contracts, so we are in the dissolution phase at the moment. We are down to a few dozen staff and we still have a number of large contracts that are being wound down, so there will obviously be variation within those. You can expect the final tally to be published before the end of this year. We are confident that we will have delivered the games under budget; it is a question of how much—
The Commonwealth Games Federation made that very clear in the five-year period leading up to the games. It saw the partnership working that went on in Scotland as being stronger than in anywhere else it had worked. It is definitely stronger than that which is being experienced in the Gold Coast, where political parties in opposition to each other at different levels of government are unable to sit round the same table and work together. I know that the organising committee in the Gold Coast is finding that a challenge at this stage of the games. A huge amount of partnership working was achieved for the games in Scotland—there is no question about that.
Interestingly, Councillor Archie Graham, who was on the organising committee’s board for the games, reported at our final board meeting last week that he had got the Glasgow City Council family together. He meant all the arm’s-length external organisations, such as City Property and City Building—there are about 18 of them. They all reported back to him that they thought that the biggest benefit of the games in the city and for the city—in their world—was the fact that all the ALEOs are now working together in a way that they had never done before, because they were forced to work together to deliver things that the city was massively dependent on at games time. If they had been unable to do that, the city would not have been able to enjoy the successful games that it enjoyed.
A lot of that comes down to pretty simple things, such as good planning and sensible procurement. We decided that we were going to be as accessible and inclusive as possible, and that cut right across mobility and access, disability and our para-sport programme. Our dedicated accessibility team, to whom great credit is due, worked on the issue for a number of years. It is worth pointing out the incredible work that Glasgow City Council and its contractors did to develop the facilities that we have in the way that they did.
Our internal approach to accessibility was to have a dedicated team who managed the issue centrally but who took a mainstreaming approach across the business. The team ensured that all the functional areas understood what accessibility meant to their programme of work, in the same way as we think about health and safety, risk management or equality. If we build from that solid foundation and those simple first principles, it is a lot easier to make decisions on the issue.
I like to think that we will see stronger commitments to improved levels of accessibility in public procurement, particularly in relation to sports facilities. Glasgow City Council did fantastically with the venues that were built for the games. I hope that that approach will be replicated across the country in future.
That is a good note on which to end our session—there is no more important legacy than the transfer of knowledge and experience that others can learn from. I thank the witnesses for the time that they have spent with us this morning and for their interesting evidence, which will help us as we explore the various aspects of legacy from a committee viewpoint.
Thank you both very much for your attendance and for your evidence.
Is there any evidence of more demand for increased facilities at sport hubs throughout the country? I know that there are a lot of hubs now, and presumably their facilities and the degree of accessibility vary. Do you know of any pressure to develop facilities, following directly on from the Commonwealth games?
The organising committee decided not to use a dedicated credit card for ticket payments after doing a lot of research with the public to find out what was important to them. I went along to a good number of the focus groups that we ran across Scotland. People are not shy about telling you the things that matter to them, where the barriers are and how you can make their lives easier. That was one of the big things that came out of the process.
If you are asking me whether I would make the same decision again, the answer is, unquestionably, yes, because I think that it was a really important statement of intent that affected an awful lot of people. Even if they are the minority, there are still an awful lot of people who benefited from our decision. If my commercial colleagues were sitting alongside me, they might express a different view. The minute that you exclude a sector so that your commercial team can receive revenues, you are taking a significant decision. In this case, we told our commercial team that they could not seek a deal from quite a wealthy sector of the market that offers very heavy support globally. What we did had real benefits at a community level in terms of accessibility and inclusivity, but such decisions always come with a cost somewhere else.
The one thing that I would say is that, in moving towards the delivery of any major event, you can never do enough research. You must find out what people want out of an event. If you give them the opportunity, they will always tell you, and you can then build a very clear picture of the things that matter. I remember one of the key cynicisms about ticketing that people expressed: the people we talked to about facilities for getting to the games said, “Well, you’ll price the tickets really low, but then you’ll do park and ride and you’ll charge us a fortune for that.” We learned all the way through the research processes, and we were able to launch our park and ride with very accessible pricing.
There was a huge effort across the games, which was really important from a health perspective as well as from an organisational perspective, to encourage people to leave their cars at home and not to drive to the games. The statistics that we collated from spectators were hugely impressive: 46 per cent of people walked at some point on their journey to venues, 38 per cent of people used the bus and 13 per cent used the subway. A very small proportion of people who came to the games brought their car.
If you do the research early and understand what people are thinking and feeling, you can make sure that you are organisationally set up to deliver in a way that will meet their needs. That will enable you to achieve other goals, such as the very significant reduction of vehicles in the city at the time of the games. We needed that in order to achieve the space required to enable all the other vehicles that we were bringing in—the buses and so on—to transport the games family around.
At a practical level, the national governing bodies for sport in this country—sportscotland and others—may have scope to consider whether to include a para-sport programme in national championships and other events that are run in Scotland. I could not tell you right now how that will be organised, but those bodies could consider whether there is an opportunity, year by year, at annual championship level, to create that same level of integration.
My question is more of a supplementary now, after Dennis Robertson’s question. The integration of the sports during the games was fantastic and was a huge success. Obviously, with multiple sports, the planning and logistics would have been difficult. From what I remember about the Olympics, there were 10 days of track and field events and then, at the tail end, another 10 days of track and field events with disabled athletes, which meant that there were 20 days of sport. If Commonwealth or Olympic games have a time constraint, how can we compress a full programme of track and field for able-bodied and disabled athletes? Could some events be missed out? I do not know enough about disabled athletics although, despite my current shape and weight, 35 years ago my sport used to be track and field. I am trying to fathom how, in a practical way, we can cram 20 days’ worth of track and field events into 10 days.
It was a pleasure.
Glasgow 2014 was the first games for which there was, in advance, an agreement on how to try to keep people involved. In the past—even with London 2012—there have been data protection challenges after the games. We agreed through the partnership that we would, a couple of years out from the games, ensure that all the data that were collected with people’s permission in the Clyde-sider recruitment period would be passed on to Volunteer Development Scotland, so that we would have a pool of people who had been, or who had shown an interest in being, involved in the games, and that those people would then have opportunities to be involved in their local communities and in national events. Our knowing who those people are is an important step forward. We have one organisation in Scotland that is completely focused on volunteering and which has the data to ensure that people are made aware of other events in their areas.
Although that is an important part of how we have sought to get people involved through the games, it is by no means the only part. I take us right back to our approach to the 2010 Delhi flag handover ceremony. When the organising committees for future games attend the closing ceremony of the current games, most take a small group of people with them. In London’s case, the committee took a big red London bus out to Beijing, and in Australia’s case, for the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth games, they took a very digital approach, with very few, but some high-profile, people. In 2009, we decided to recruit people from every corner and community in Scotland and get them involved in a mass-cast approach to the flag handover ceremony. Those people gave up weeks of their time preparing, through boot camps and induction programmes. We flew them out to Delhi, they performed in a stadium in front of a huge global audience and then we brought them back. Those people stayed involved—they were involved in the Clyde-sider recruitment programme; indeed, we had a good number of Clyde-siders who were performers in Delhi as well as being ceremony cast members in Glasgow.
The organising committee—never mind all the legacy programmes that are run by the Government—has run a lot of programmes, including that one and the lead 2014 programme, in particular, to get people involved in the games and stay actively involved after the games, rather than it just being a one-off, two-week involvement that was quickly forgotten.
On that point, it would be very welcome if we were to get the same kind of liaison throughout the country.
I have not seen all the facilities in Glasgow, but the ones that I have seen are fantastic. I want to ask about access to those facilities for people from less well-off communities. Our Aberdeen Sports Village is also a tremendous facility, and when it opened, it was very heavily used—it still is—as you are saying the Glasgow facilities are. However, people in the more outlying areas or in the poorer parts of the city have commented that they found it difficult to access the facilities on the grounds of expense, distance and so on. You may have partly answered my concerns in your response on sport hubs, but what do you think the legacy will be for people who are not readily able to access the new facilities?
11:00
The Commonwealth games stand out as being the most inclusive of the major international sporting events because of the integrated programme of para-sports. The Olympic movement has grown up with a different approach, in which the governing body that runs para-sports is different from the one that runs the rest of the Olympic programme. The integrated programme has created an opportunity for us and we have done a huge amount of work with the various organisations in Scotland that are responsible for disability sport to engage them in our planning process over past five or six years.
It is incredibly important that the step change that has been achieved over the past few years on awareness and accessibility is built on and that things are not allowed to drift back to the level that they started at. Questions about the monitoring and continued development of awareness and accessibility in years to come will need to be addressed to sportscotland and other parts of the games partnership—the people who will be responsible for looking after all sections of the sporting population—when you take evidence from them at future sessions.
Good morning and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2014 of the Health and Sport Committee. As usual at this point, I ask everyone in the room to switch off mobile phones and other wireless devices, as they can disrupt proceedings. However, I remind people that officials and members might use tablet devices instead of hard copies of their papers.
We have received apologies from Richard Simpson and Richard Lyle. I welcome Dennis Robertson as Richard Lyle’s substitute: it is always a pleasure to have you along, Dennis.
Our only agenda item today is scrutiny of the Commonwealth games, which were, of course, held in Glasgow during the summer. Who could forget? Members will recall that Glasgow 2014 chief executive David Grevemberg was scheduled to give evidence to the committee last month, but was unable to attend due to a family emergency. Mr Grevemberg has since moved on to a new post with the Commonwealth Games Federation, so we wish him well in that. We may hear from him in that role when we discuss the legacy partners, which include the Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council.
We are delighted to have with us Gordon Arthur, who is the chief communications officer of Glasgow 2014, and Kenny Stewart, who is Government relations manager of Glasgow 2014. I believe that Gordon Arthur has some opening remarks, after which we will proceed to questions.
A huge range of legacy projects have set a completely new standard for legacy planning ahead of the games, which is to the great credit of everybody who was involved in bidding for the games.
The economic legacy has been significant, particularly in Glasgow—more than £200 million-worth of the tier 1 contracts were awarded to Glasgow-based companies—but also across Scotland. The way in which we procured a lot of the contracts ensured that apprenticeships were created, and that local people got trickle-down benefits from the supplier relationships. The economic legacy of the games has been significant.
The new venues were all open a year before the games, which has never been the case before, and people have had the opportunity to use the venues. It is also clear that the people who are using the new venues come not just from the immediate local area. For example, the velodrome that was built for the games is the busiest velodrome in the world at the moment; it has more people coming through the door than any other velodrome. People are having to wait up to three months to get on the induction programme to use it, and are travelling long distances to do so.
We have created venues and an event that have inspired people to get more involved in sport, which should, over time, create significant social and health legacies, as well. I know that the Government and the council are keen to monitor those.
The games also provided a huge confidence boost for the nation and for the city of Glasgow, which now ranks well within the top 10 world cities for hosting major events. In the lead-up to the games, Glasgow secured next year’s world gymnastics championships and next year’s International Paralympic Committee swimming world championships. Glasgow is bringing major events in, all of which will have a significant economic impact on the city as it makes its long-term transition from its industrial heritage to its future as a major events destination.
Those are the legacies from the games that are already visible, and I hope that they will continue to be of benefit as we measure and track them through the partners in the years to come.
What was the budget?
I mean at sports clubs and other organisations from which information has come back.
The full budget for the games was £575.6 million, £90 million of which was the security budget, which was the responsibility of the Scottish Government.
What was the final cost of the Commonwealth games?
10:45
I do not think that a new round of statistics has been produced. We have heard anecdotally about busy clubs, but it is just a couple of months after the games, so the information remains anecdotal.
We are now in our last five minutes and we are required to conclude the committee shortly as the chamber opens for business at 11.40. There are no other questions from members. The only area from our briefing that we have not mentioned is post-games assessment. It has been a really interesting session, hearing about how much work went into the games. We all shared that warm glow—and still do—about the events and the impact of the games on the whole of the country. However, post-games assessment also looks at and highlights challenges and what might have worked better, so you have three minutes to tell us what would have worked better and what advice you are giving as you hand the baton over to the people who will take on your responsibility and run the next Commonwealth games.
I close the meeting so that members can proceed to the chamber if required.
Meeting closed at 11:37.
The programme to roll out community sport hubs in the past few years has hugely increased capacity and the facilities that are available to the people whom we hope the games have inspired to get into sport and leisure in their communities. The vast majority of community sport hubs have been delivered; those facilities are in place and are being well used.
Is it the Scottish Government’s view that it will come in on budget? The reason why I am asking is that there was some speculation that an initial sum of about £370 million had to be spent and that another £80 million was added to that, taking the figure to £450 million and upwards. It is worth mentioning when we talk about legacy that that is a significant investment from Scottish people, and what the committee really wants to hear about is how we can ensure that that significant investment actually delivers volunteering capacity for more than the fortnight. How will it be measured? How will we see it through? How can the committee ensure that there will be volunteers from communities that find harder it to participate, where there are fewer volunteers? How will that be handled, measured and delivered over the next couple of years? Are there any signs that the games have increased volunteering in those areas?
Our role throughout the process has been to ensure that we have recruited and involved volunteers in a way that ensures that their games experience and the inspiration that has been brought to them by the games will have ignited a desire to stay involved in their communities. The process from here on is one that will be run by the games partners with the support of many community organisations, such as Volunteer Development Scotland. You mentioned that you will be having a committee meeting with the partners to discuss those issues; it will be their plans that will ensure the success or otherwise of the ongoing involvement in community volunteering in the years ahead. I know that those organisations have ambitions and aspirations for the long term, and that they plan to measure a lot of different outcomes from the games over the long term.
You do not have figures yet.
So, we do not know at this stage.
We do not have data yet.
At this stage, it is hard to say. There has been only a short time since the games in which to measure those things, and an awful lot of the games legacy will be measured over five, 10 or 15 years and not over a few months in the immediate aftermath of the games.
The committee is particularly interested in the question because of our focus on community sport, access, participation and support for those.
As Gordon Arthur said, in advance of the games we put in place a data-sharing agreement with Volunteer Scotland, which applied to the entire applicant pool of 50,811 people. We saw a tremendous opt-in rate: about 87 per cent of those people wanted their data to be passed on, so those data are now with VS and it is already starting to take advantage of that with the development of what it calls the my volunteer account, which allows people access to personalised services. I hope that we will see that starting to have an effect over the next wee while.
It is also worth adding that, working with the likes of VS, Skills Development Scotland and others, we created a microsite for all applicants who volunteered at the games, which has signposted them to various organisations for future volunteering, employment, skills training and other aspects of personal development.
The database of people who volunteered has been shared with other organisations.
Yes. All their contact information, including demographic information, is—
What is the target of the 85,000 that you would expect to go on to volunteer?
As an organisation, we do not have a target in that regard. I suspect that VS probably does, but I do not know what that target is.
That was positive. I do not want to labour the point, convener.
For my next question, I want to tell you another story, but I can assure you that it is a story with a purpose. When Ross Murdoch won his medal, my two nieces were delirious with delight, because they swim at the pool in the Vale of Leven that Ross’s family are involved with. That made his win local, not just national or a win for team Scotland. The point is that the story seemed to be the same right across Scotland, and that was because of the size of the Scottish team. Of course, people will still need to meet qualifying standards and personal best benchmarks—for some, getting to the final or the final heats will be a huge achievement—but do you agree that, as far as the motivation and participation of sporting heroes are concerned, the size of the Scottish team was vital and will set a new benchmark for future Scottish teams, even when they compete in Commonwealth games much further afield?
You make a valid point. If, through athletes’ performances and their winning medals, we can root inspiration more widely in communities, the impact will be bigger. The Commonwealth Games Federation organises its funding of teams by means of a team-size calculator, which looks at the size of the team that has performed for each country over the past three games. Scotland had a big team at the domestic games because its travel, transportation and accommodation costs were very little, and its team for the previous two games in Delhi and Melbourne were also fairly big. However, the funding for team Scotland for the Gold Coast Commonwealth games will be worked out on an average of the three previous games, and the CGF through the organising committee will fund a team up to the average of the three Scotland teams at Melbourne, Delhi and Glasgow.
It is therefore not simply a case of meeting the qualifying criteria; there will be financial pressures on the team. Even if participants achieve a high level of performance in their attempts to qualify for the team, those financial pressures will make it harder for Scotland to take to the Gold Coast as big a team as it had for its home games. However, on your basic point about inspiration being rooted back into communities, the broader that approach, the greater its likely impact over time.
Some of the questions that I wanted to ask, on the back of Rhoda Grant’s questions, have been answered. The built legacy from the work that was done in the east end of Glasgow is clear—we can see it and touch it. That is a wonderful sight in comparison with what was there before. I doubt very much whether such a transformation could have taken place if the games had not taken place there. I think that the social aspect will last for a long time, too.
I do not come from the area and I am not a Celtic supporter, but I know that the games transformed positively the area around Celtic park. That is wonderful and I do not grudge it.
What will be the legacy benefit for the rest of Scotland? The built legacy cannot apply everywhere, but is there any indication of the sporting legacy in places that were not close to the games but where people saw them on screens? Is there evidence of activity that is taking place because of the games?
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