National Assembly for Wales

Hi. I'm Emily. I'm the deputy leader in Conwy council.

Bore da. I'm Sarah Ecob. I'm head of economy and culture for Conwy County Borough Council—so, looking after conferences, theatres, culture, leisure and economic development. Diolch.

Thank you very much. You're all very welcome. We will go straight to questions, if that's all right. As I said, please don't feel like you all have to answer every question, but indicate if you want to come in, and we'll go to you. So, Carolyn will be starting us.

What assessment have you made of the number of sports and leisure complexes and facilities that might close over the next 12 months? What's the likelihood, if they close, that they may ever reopen again?

I think that this is going to be a theme throughout the entirety of this morning. It's really difficult to have these conversations without looking at it through the lens of finance in the current situation in local government. Over the last four years, we've reduced services in this area by 44 per cent, so it's a significant chop that we have had in the area. So, everything is on the table that's not statutory at the moment. We're in that much of a difficult financial situation.

What we're really trying to do is work out how we do this without closing facilities, because we strongly believe that, once they're gone, they're gone. The building itself will be released, either for other purposes or to get capital receipts. So, we are trying to work out how we deliver the services. We might have to reduce opening hours and reduce what's going on there, but we're trying to keep the buildings alive. But it's very, very difficult under the financial situation that we're in. 

Huw.

I think that you're asking specifically around leisure—

Yes. Sport, leisure and culture as well. Culture and arts.

So, obviously, some of those buildings will be revenue generating. The trick for councils or contracted bodies that run such buildings would be: are they washing their face? Are they operating at a loss or are they making profit? I guess, to add to Emily's point, because it all comes down to funding, ultimately, what you have less and less of, given the scale of the current budget gap that councils across Wales are facing, is that latitude to continue to fund leisure facilities where they cost, because they're not statutory requirements. It becomes harder and harder to justify. Now, there are various models that are being pursued to get that cost of subsidy down. There are councils who have outsourced their leisure services. There are councils now insourcing their leisure services because they think maybe that's a different way of making a saving. Certainly, from a Cardiff perspective, having eight years ago outsourced our leisure services, it's not been an easy journey, not least with COVID, but that company has a plan to achieve a zero-subsidy position, albeit they are not there yet, and, in the contract, they have to get our permission to close a building. They are not seeking that at the moment, but certainly we're aware that that is a pressure.

Members will be aware, in Cardiff again, of the decision last year around St David's Hall. In that example, that was a national facility that was being entirely funded by Cardiff Council at a cost to the council of £1 million per year, so we felt obliged, given we are now facing in Cardiff a £60 million gap in the coming year, to look at other means of keeping that venue open, protecting what goes on in there, but moving away from having to put a subsidy in. So, these will be conversations that are live in every authority across Wales.

I'm interested, Huw, in the language you've used in answering that question. The language was all of subsidies and losses and business. It wasn't about service. And I'm interested as to why you chose to use that approach. Why employ that approach?

Because, Alun, that is the reality of what councils are now grappling with. So, let me, if I may, go through the—

It's the language rather than the facts that I'm interested in.

So, there are statutory obligations and there are discretionary obligations. Now, I would strongly argue that probably everything the committee is looking at today in terms of sport, leisure, cultural provision, is actual a preventative service, be that addressing physical health through preventative means or mental health through preventative means. But the funding settlement does not recognise that, nor does it in the way that the health service has been funded to a greater degree than local government in recent years. So, if I look at the budgetary gap in Cardiff that we are facing—£60 million—of that, £10 million is just simply the cost of commissioning care afresh, not additional care, just renewing contracts for children's services; £10 million is additional cost and growth for dementia care; and £10 million is demand increasing for additional learning needs in our schools. That's £30 million straight off the bat. Our entire annual budget for parks in Cardiff is £6 million. Our entire budget for libraries is £6 million. We spend less than £2 million on sports and development. So, in one year, we could close all our parks and libraries, and we still wouldn't be, you know—

I don't disagree with you about the issues you face, by the way. I'm not going to challenge you on any of that at all. But the question I asked was quite a discrete question, in fact, about the language and tone and approach, if you like—

So, the reason why the subsidy point—

Can I just finish?

Go on, yes.

All of those services and service areas that you've described are essential elements of what local government will provide to the population. I've got no issue with any of that. But you didn't use that language when you were talking about culture and arts and sport. You were talking about their subsidies and losses and the rest of it, and I'm interested as to what that says about the approach that a local authority takes to culture and art—that it is one of these things, nice to have: 'We'll run this as a business and if it make a loss we'll cut it.' I'm just interested as to that approach and that philosophical, if you like, approach to it.

Okay. I think it's coming at it from the other side, actually, because if you can eliminate the subsidy, you've protected it, right? If the service washes its face, then there is no threat to that service of having to close. I think, in a broader sense, because we've had 15 years of austerity, councils tend to try to take the approach, when they're looking for savings—. We seek efficiencies, we remodel services, we try and deliver things by different means. Those are becoming increasingly difficult areas to drive through savings, because we've been doing it for 15 years. So, then, very bluntly, and you see this now happening in councils in England that have issed section 114 notices and commissioners come in, you close a leisure centre, you make that saving, that saving is guaranteed. It's blunt, and it's a tool that we've avoided in Cardiff, and I think lots of authorities have shied away from it in Wales. But it just shows that if you have to make the saving, you can make it by closing something. But I agree with you. I think we can all acknowledge not only that these things are nice to have, but, as I said, that they are a core part of a preventative agenda—

But they're also about Cardiff's—

Okay. I think we might have to move on. You've both made your points very fully on this point. I'm going to bring Sarah in before we go back to Carolyn. 

What I'll do is I'll bring in Sarah and then Amanda on this point. 

Thank you very much. Yes, I agree with Huw that the services are preventative, and on the impacts of both, the economic impact is contributing to jobs, to bed nights to supply chains, and also well-being, which is helping to reduce the impact for our social services and health colleagues. So, we are, as Councillor Emily mentioned earlier, fighting really hard to keep our buildings and our services open against the backdrop of extremely severe financial difficulties. But I would like to just make the point that the difference between trying to move a theatre, for example, as Huw mentioned, into a zero-budget situation in a city centre, in a big city like Cardiff, is very, very different to that for most of us in the rest of Wales. So, obviously, we're all working towards that outcome at the moment, because we are desperately trying to save these really important services that have such a big impact. I think that, going back to your initial question, the potential for increasing costs elsewhere as we lose these relatively affordable services, particularly in rural communities and smaller community areas, is potentially quite significant. Diolch.

—the Health and Social Care Committee in the Senedd has actually called for a preventative category of spend in future budgets. Would any of you have a view on that, because a lot of your answers have touched on that point? Huw, I'm going to come to you because of some of what you were talking about earlier. 

Yes, I think that certainly has merits in being looked at, but I would probably say that that category of preventive spend needs to have a non-clinical focus, because what that shouldn’t be is devolving funding into an integrated care fund and then that being divvied up through a regional partnership board arrangement. I think there is a strong argument to devolve considerable elements of public health to local government—and the WLGA has been calling for this for many years—funded appropriately, and to have a community as opposed to a clinically led focus on public health that speaks to the obesity agenda, that speaks to a lack of physical exercise and also speaks to the mental health agenda, loneliness, social isolation, which can be better funded through a direct delivery on the part of local government.

We talked about how core revenue funding is still needed for councils to keep a lot of these facilities open. So, what about capital funding? What's the impact been on the facilities with the cuts in capital funding for local authorities, and with austerity?

Emily.

I think the capital funding piece is really important and it's sometimes the bit that doesn't get as much attention. When we're talking about the cuts that have been made—. I'll give you an example, Venue Cymru is in Conwy—hopefully everyone knows Venue Cymru, but we have, over the years, managed to gain funding for different elements of that in order to grow, but it hasn't been for a lot of the capital stuff. So, the lighting and the seating are very, very dated and need a serious amount of work doing on them. But I think that also falls into: what are we trying to do here, what do we need to do? We throw buzzwords around like 'transformation', but we do need to transform services so that they become sustainable, not just for this budget year, but so that we can carry on with these services for a very long time. 

In order to do that and to make that transformational change, we have plans with Venue Cymru to be able to turn it into a culture hub, where it's not just a theatre or a conference room, but you can have your library in there and we can have our tourist information in there, and you can have access to benefits advice, and it becomes a hub—it's across the road from the swimming pool—where there is that sense of belonging and that the building belongs to everybody so that the service on a cost level becomes much more sustainable and self-running, and we can have a big social prescribing piece, which is what we were referring to before, all from that same place, which seems to then make that a much more sustainable piece in order to move forward with. But in order to do that and make that change, we have to have capital investment in it. So, we've put a bid in to the UK Government, from levelling-up. It was rejected the first time around and agreed the second time around. But, with everything that's going on, we're awaiting news to see if that's been pulled again. If that has been pulled, we can't go ahead with that project.

So, even though we are looking, as councils, at how we transform services so that we can offer those services to residents, because it has such a massive impact—it is on the preventative agenda—such a big impact on mental health and well-being, it will end up costing more in the long run not to provide those services, but it does need capital investment. And not being able to do that makes it a really difficult position to be in, where we know, actually, this is how we can make this service sustainable and this is how we can protect it for years to come, but we don't have the capital investment to do it.

Thank you. Yes. I think the lack of capital funding available is having a really big impact on our revenue costs, as Amanda was referring to. We know that we have equipment, for example, that staff are having to spend a long time setting up or running, so if we could get the investment that we need, that would reduce the costs, it would support theatres and it would make sure that we're still attracting companies in.

For our leisure centres, it means that people still want to come to our leisure centres in local authorities. In Conwy, we have managed to secure funding to improve facilities at some of our leisure centres, and we have seen the real benefits of that. Our Ffit membership, which is our membership scheme for the gyms and the swimming pools, has been going up because people are getting a really great service and what they need. We still have leisure centres that are desperately, desperately in need of major capital funding.

We're looking at the moment at trying to secure reductions in energy costs through investing in the green agenda. So, obviously, that's got really great benefits for our environment. Our energy costs have gone up in our swimming pools by something like 300 per cent in the last 10 years. So, we desperately need to address that, because that money could be better spent on providing facilities for people providing classes—our revenue costs—and protecting and making sure that we can keep the buildings open at suitable times. So, it has real potential to spiral downwards, but as soon as we get suitable capital investment, it really helps us get into those efficiency savings that we need to meet the budget challenges that we've got at the moment. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. Huw.

Yes, I think the point is clearly made about the link between investment through capital and then decreasing pressure on revenue budgets. Certainly, there've been lots of great examples across Wales of investing to save, co-locating services as Emily was mentioning, or just creating better services that then in turn attract footfall and, for leisure centres in particular, attract revenue. And that has been done for the last 15 years.

I would say that the capital grant that councils get from the Welsh Government no longer allows us to keep pace with the cost of maintenance. So, on annual sums in parks, for example, inflation has eaten into that. That is then forcing councils to have to borrow, as opposed to just use capital grant. And then, clearly, the other thing that changed significantly, in 2022, was, post the Liz Truss mini-budget, soaring interest rates, which meant that the cost of borrowing then became pretty painful. So, whereas a business case stacked up when you were borrowing at 2 per cent, and so you could invest in a leisure centre or whatever, it's much harder to make that stack up now. And, in any case, previously and before, you were taking a business decision and there was risk there. If you build it and people don't come, that is an impact then on your bottom line, and it's councils having to manage that risk, going forward, as well. 

Thank you. In a moment, we might have to move on to other Members, I'm afraid. 

Huw, what have you opened up now? [Laughter.]

Okay. Sarah, you wanted to come in on this, I think. Well, not on that particular point, but on the original question. 

Yes, on the original question. We have seen at Venue Cymru that our numbers have recovered now. We’ve managed to get some fantastic programming in and lots of really great shows. So, I think, we’re back to pre-COVID levels. Like other places, our cinema is still very hard hit. As Roland mentioned, that’s down to product. I think, also, the area in which our cinema sits is a less well-off area. People are struggling to find money, although we do keep our prices very low. What we definitely see is that secondary spend is down, and obviously that impacts on our revenue and our ability to keep our income levels up.

On the libraries, again, we saw a slow start to recovery from that. I think people were quite nervous about coming out, and libraries are very well used by people who might be more vulnerable within our society. And bringing in the warm hub last year definitely helped with increasing those numbers.

Going back to the capital question, one of our libraries moved location during COVID into a lovely new space, a lovely modern library with a big children’s library, and that is one of our libraries that recovered quickest because the local community are really keen to come into that.

And if I can just touch on the major events as well, we’ve had to cut all of our spend on major events and shift the focus of what we do. So, where we are able to bring major events in still, without funding to do that, we have a real engagement with that from the community. So, we recently had the Tour of Britain come through north Wales, and lots of people came out—really positive feedback about having something so exciting and impactful in the area. So, I would echo the comment made earlier that it would be great to see some money available to assist with making sure that we get these events in Wales, and get those brilliant impacts from bed nights to people working on the events to supply chain for our communities in this country. 

And I think Sarah might want to come in as well. 

Diolch, Huw. Sarah, did you raise your hand? I couldn't—

I didn't, but, yes, I have got some points. Thank you. So, Amanda mentioned the national exercise referral scheme, and I think that's a really brilliant example of where we're working closely with colleagues in health, and that has been hugely successful. We have got so many people that have gone through that scheme who have benefited after they've had medical difficulties. Unfortunately, the grant has remained the same over a number of years, but our costs have gone up. So, we are able to deal with fewer people now than we were when the scheme was first put in place, despite the fact that, really, there's so much evidence about how successful it's been, and obviously that preventative work is very likely to be much cheaper than the further medicalisation further down the road.

And, as others have mentioned, the shared prosperity fund has absolutely rescued us this year in terms of our cultural and community sport offering. What we find is that we put on some projects that are specifically around mental health, for example, or we used to work with an organisation that was running a dementia choir that was really successful, but even where we're running projects that are broader, open access, when we take feedback, we always have people saying, 'My mental health has improved. I feel less lonely'. With young people, often we might hear that they're engaging better at school. I've just seen a comment that we had from one of our groups for adults, and the lady had said that she's much better able to cope with the pain caused by her arthritis because she's been out and about and doing things and engaging in a different way. So, it may feel like, well, these are essentially luxuries in this time when we have so many financial challenges, but I think, as I said earlier, that preventative work that we do and that comes out of engagement with sports and culture actually should be part of the solution, going forward.

I don't think we can get away from the fact that, yes, it has had an impact on the most vulnerable people. Those people who can afford to pay can still pay and can still go and use facilities and events, and I don't think we should be shying away from the fact that that is where it's having a considerable impact. I also don't think we can talk about this without talking about the huge impact on mental health. I think we're in the middle of a huge mental health epidemic, and I don't know if it is as talked about and realised as to how much is actually going on out there at the moment; it's really not good. And if we are having to remove facilities and access for people to be able to manage their mental health and well-being in a much broader sense, from day-to-day life, being able to manage and cope with day-to-day stresses, being able to go to the gym, being able to access services, and go to the library, and sing, and do everything that they should be able to do, if we are starting to remove that, we are having a really big impact, and I don't think the impact of that is realised. It's really hard to quantify, particularly with such early intervention and prevention that will be going on before anything's happened. That's quite a difficult one to try and put metrics around.

I also think we need to have a look at the data when we're looking at population and what's happening in Wales. Apart from the cities, everywhere else is decreasing in population, and particularly younger people, and we know that we are haemorrhaging young talent outside of their natural communities. If we don't do something and are able to provide something to make them stay, then it's going to be really difficult to encourage them to do that. So, we need to be offering those professional sports events and those events to make younger people more attracted to their areas so that they want to come home once they've done their studies, or wherever they're coming. And without the ability to do that, what is the offer, and how are we going to encourage people to stay to ensure that our communities are vibrant throughout?

So, going back to your question directly, I think this is having a direct impact on the most vulnerable, and they're the people who, in my view, certainly, councils should be prioritising and needing to provide services for. So, we've got to think of a better way between us, together, as to how we protect that and how we make sure that those people aren't adversely affected, and that we can protect them as much as we can from funding cuts.

Thank you. That was a really comprehensive answer. 

Diolch, Amanda. We're going to be moving on to Laura's questions now again. Apologies to Members, because I realise that there are lots of other questions that Members wanted to ask, but I'm keen for all Members to have the opportunity to ask questions in this session. 

Thank you, Chair. Yes, that was a very interesting comment, and, just on that, about how we protect those in lower socioeconomic backgrounds from these funding cuts, how have you sought to mitigate that impact on those people particularly, and those with protected characteristics, who are going to be hit hard by this? Transport is a massive issue, as you said. We’re not joining up the dots—we’re doing one thing, and then not making it possible by not doing another thing, as you’ve just quite rightly pointed out. In rural areas, we are facility poor. So, how do we go about that? What conversations have you had with the Welsh Government about joining those dots and supplementing transport costs, or something like that? Could you just explain what you’re doing to ensure that those groups, particularly, aren’t hardest hit? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks for your question. I think it is really important that we are trying to mitigate those, and I think that’s where, if I’m honest, the grants have come in, and that’s where we’ve really focused on with the grants that we’ve got. Obviously, it’s really difficult not knowing—that whole planning bit is really hard with that. So, any kind of multi-year settlements would be really good, so we can actually plan as to what’s happening, because, purely because of the cuts we’ve had to make to balance the budget, last year, our economy and culture service had a 20 per cent and, the year before, it had an 11 per cent cut. That’s a serious amount of money that has gone from these services that are primarily there to help the most vulnerable and those with protected characteristics. So, at the moment, we’re trying to mitigate the best we can, and we’re trying to make sure, when we’re looking at grants and applying for grants, that that’s very much at the forefront of what we’re doing, in order to try and protect it for the most vulnerable people. But I go back to what I said right at the very start, that it is really difficult to take any of this in the current financial situation, because it’s not a good look, is it?

I would say, overwhelmingly, councils are prioritising services physically located in areas of higher poverty. And, clearly, there is poverty in all areas, but there are, clearly, denser concentrations, and that’s where services have been protected, in the main. And, then, we’re looking at how existing services then get supplemented to meet that additional demand. So, for example, our libraries are often now, in fact, community hubs. They double now as warm spaces, in response to the energy cost crisis. Our money advice services are delivered through all our libraries in Cardiff, because, again, every year, through that money advice service, we help residents tap into upwards of £50 million of unclaimed benefits that they’re entitled to, that they wouldn’t be claiming. We are providing digital access through our libraries as well. So, when the last Government introduced universal credit, they made that digital by default. Clearly, a lot of people, actually, on universal credit haven’t got access to the internet, so we massively expanded digital provision—computers, et cetera—within our libraries, so that people would be able to come into us and access those services through that.

So, there is more, Chair, in terms of how councils have adapted and prioritised those most vulnerable to the effects of poverty, through the delivery of all these services. But we can’t underestimate the particular squeeze on the benefits system, particularly with the local housing allowance, which has meant that there is less disposable income amongst lower income families to then participate in culture or sporting activities, and that, then, has an impact on their mental and physical health.

Diolch, Huw. I think Sarah wants to come in before we go back to Laura. Sarah. 

Thanks. Yes, it’s really great to hear Huw shining a light on how libraries are not just about books, and how important they are. I just wanted to mention that all of us, in all the local authorities, are trying to get funding through grants, whether that’s through the Arts Council of Wales, or, in our case, Actif North Wales, for sports, or through trusts and foundations where they’re eligible. One of the big problems we have is that a lot of that funding is single year, as Emily mentioned. It’s great that Actif North Wales are now going to give us indicative funding for three years, which is really brilliant. That’s really going to help us plan and to stop putting in projects that, for a year, are difficult to engage people in, and then it’s difficult to sustain the benefits that we can see coming up.

And the other thing that is problematic is, often, our core funds are not available. We cannot deliver projects if we do not have some core staff, and, at the moment, particularly when shared prosperity comes to an end, those core staff are very much under threat. We won't be able to go for all of those additional grants and what have you, because we'll have nobody actually who is a core person trying to deliver it. Thanks.

Thank you. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but, Huw Thomas, are you the local government association spokesperson for Wales, or just Cardiff?

Yes.

Yes, you are. Brilliant, in that case, I just wanted to ask you a quick question. What's the average spend on arts and culture by local government across Wales, please?

[Inaudible.]—Laura.

Laura, Huw's going to write to us.

Right, okay. Sorry, I didn't hear that. Thank you. I think that would be really interesting, to see what the different spends across Wales would be.

How are you working together? As well as going for all the grants and everything, how are you working collaboratively in terms of, for example, working together across border with different local authorities? I'm thinking, in my area of south-east Wales, for example, of Torfaen working with Monmouthshire or Blaenau Gwent, et cetera. Can you just explain how you're doing that, to sort of mitigate the low funding? Thank you.

I guess there are multiple examples of that kind of collaboration and partnership working, and I guess some of it will be specifically within this area. Some of it will be more general but will have some impact on this area. So, for example, there are councils within the Gwent area that even share, I understand it, a chief executive at this point now. Certainly, within health board footprints, there is then a collaboration between the local authorities and the health board. Again, if I just pick the example of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan because that's the one I'm more familiar with, through the regional partnership board, there is working ongoing through a health board-led strategy but with local government input. The strategy is called Move More Eat Well, so clearly on the physical activity agenda, and also on diet et cetera. So, those are strategies that are health led but with local government collaboration and cross-pollination. Clearly, we recognise as councils that the borders that exist on a map between us aren't real in the mind of service users, so it is possibly more convenient for certain residents in Conwy to cross the border into Gwynedd, for example, and there may be even some competition around that. But I think we all—and I think you can hear this from the common themes in the comments from all the witnesses today—are employing similar strategies, albeit in slightly different contexts, to achieve the same goal of keeping these services going in what are extraordinarily difficult times, and I think we are at the toughest point of budget setting that I think we've experienced even in 14 or 15 years of austerity.

Diolch, Huw. Sarah and Roland, if I could ask for incredibly short answers, because we have around a minute before we're out of time and then I'm going to ask Laura to ask one final question.

Okay. Very quickly, we're not just working with other local authorities; we are working with town and community councils, we are working with sports governing bodies, we are working with local and national sports and cultural organisations. So, we are trying to maximise any money that we have by working in partnership across the board. Diolch.

Diolch. Thank you very much. Roland.

Laura, if you have a very brief final question, you're welcome to ask it in the last few moments.

Me?

Yes.

Sorry. I was just wondering, really quickly, Chair, if everyone could please write to us on your thoughts about using twenty-first century schools and the barriers that are not allowing that to happen in terms of sports facilities in your local council areas across Wales. Thank you. But I want to know—one final question—what else the Welsh Government could do beyond additional funding to mitigate the impact of reduced funding on culture and sport. Thank you.

I know it's a big question, but short answers, and you could also write to us. But, if there's a headline point from any of you—. Amanda has her hand up. I'll go to Amanda first and then I'll go to Emily. Amanda.

I'm interested in what the politicians have got to say about what the Welsh Government are doing, in fact, in terms of the approach taken, because when the Minister is sitting in your seats in a few weeks' time, you know and we all know what they're going to say. So, are there other issues or channels that the Welsh Government could use, and your relationship with the Welsh Government, in this particular field?

And before you come back on that, Carolyn, you had a comment.

Yes. Today, we've heard that you're really struggling for funding, and without grants coming in, whether from the health board or other bodies, or the shared prosperity fund, you'd really struggle to continue with this service. So, we've heard in evidence that making it statutory or even applying the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 might save services. So, how often do you apply the well-being of future generations Act and what weight does it have for you, because I know you're struggling?

Diolch. Right, so on Alun's challenge first, I know Huw wanted to come in. Emily, forgive me, I will bring you in.

Well, my answer to Alun picks up the point that Carolyn is making about future generations. The first thing to the Welsh Government is let's not create more legislation without funding to match it, because legislation is— 

So, you don't want statutory provision in this area.

Not without the funding alongside it. 

That's clear. 

I think the original question was about what else, apart from funding. The NERS point is well made. Is there something to be looked at from the Welsh Government around giving non-domestic rate relief for leisure centres, for example? I do think that there is more that could be done in terms of that preventative agenda per se, and giving councils greater powers themselves to operate that within a public health model. And I know that this is on the stocks in terms of a potential tourism levy that would allow councils to have a financial return from cultural events and major events, but our long-standing aim as the WLGA is to achieve greater fiscal devolution so that we don't have to come to the Welsh Government to say, 'Give us more money'; we could take some control of that agenda ourselves as well.  

Rather than ring-fence grants. 

Rather than ring-fence grants, absolutely. And longer term grants.

I just need to ask this one question: to CJCs or to local government?

To local government. They are the sovereign body.

I'm going to give the last word on all of this to Emily, taking on board also Alun's challenge and Carolyn's question about the future generations. Yes, easy, right? [Laughter.] Easy. Go for it. 

I was just going to say that we've run out of time for a really big question, so I think we should write. 

I know, and we will be writing to you to ask you to give us a fuller answer. Forgive me that we've—

No, it's okay. I was just going to say—and Huw has picked up a lot of what I was going to say, actually—that I think we do need to write to make that comprehensive point because it is a point about, when the Minister is sat here, what it is that we're asking for. But I do think that, without any additional—. We want additional funding, let's be really clear, but there are things that they can do that aren't costing extra that will help. So, it's that idea—and I know it was said in jest before—about a multi-year settlement for planning, particularly with grants, as it's really difficult, because you have staff leaving because they don't know what's going on and then the project folds, and then, with all those people who you've just supported for the last nine months, everything falls and actually the grant then comes back in, so you have to start from scratch again. And there's no additional money incurred there; it's just knowing so that we can plan better. There's lots more that I can say, but I think, given the time, we should come back on that one.

Can I just say about the CJC, just to explain that?

In around 15 seconds. 

It's councils who've got the authority and the responsibility to act in this area. The CJC is a regional economic development body. They've got a clear role, but there are 10 leaders around that table in south-east Wales. That's not the body that's got the bandwidth to deal with the specific issue that we're addressing here.

Andrew Howard, WSA chief exec. 

Bore da. Fergus Feeney, chief executive officer of Swim Wales. 

Bore da. Vicki Sutton, CEO, Netball Wales. 

We'll go straight into questions, if that's all right with you. We've heard in the past from Sport Wales that participation in sport is already significantly skewed against inequality and people who are on low incomes. In terms of the inequality gap, how has that been affected by the cuts and reduced spending on culture and sport by local authorities? How do you think that is manifesting itself? Whoever wants to go first. Andrew. 

Particularly for our members—and we represent 140 organisations across the sport and leisure sector in Wales—those funding cuts have been really significant. We've broadly been dealing with reduced cash in real-term budgets on an annual basis since at least 2012, albeit except for the years during the pandemic when we actually had a small marginal increase. And there's also been a change to the distribution model for a lot of the non-governmental bodies through Sport Wales, but they knew that was coming, so they've been dealing with budget cuts and how they're going to respond to that and show resilience across the sector. We've seen redundancies and recruitment freezes across the sector. We've lost some really good people in the sector that have either gone across to England to work in sport, or left the sport sector altogether. And there's a real concern over the future financial viability in terms of some of our sports, and that has led to a bit of an exodus in terms of staff as well.

In terms of delivery, some brilliant projects that have been delivered have either been cut or withdrawn altogether. Some great new initiatives that some of our members would like to deliver have been placed on hold as a result of the funding cuts. If I can just give you one example of a programme that won our best campaign at the Welsh Sports Association sports industry awards back in June, Weightlifting Wales's Raise the Bar campaign, which was set up originally as part of the Winter of Wellbeing initiative, which was funded by the Welsh Government, and we're grateful for that, is aimed at increasing young people's confidence through social interaction. It supports the social, emotional and physical well-being of young people and uses the power of sport, through weightlifting and strength training, to deliver a lot of wider strategic and social goals. It supports children in deprived areas, helps reduce loneliness and isolation and it's been exceptionally popular. There were waiting lists throughout Wales and, indeed, there are some people that started in that programme during the Winter of Wellbeing that are now representing Wales. So, there's a pathway there for those who excel as well. The example of the impact is that that initiative has been cut by 50 per cent, and that means that the delivery is a lot worse as a result of that. So, that's the kind of impact that we're experiencing across our membership.

Thank you, Andrew. Did either of you—? Please don't feel that you have to answer every question at all, but if there's anything that you wanted to add, you're welcome to.  

I'm happy to go, Chair. Thank you. I've sat, not in this room before, but I've sat in front of you guys before, I think, a year ago or a year last March, and I talked about our vision at Swim Wales—six years old now—as aquatics for everyone for life, and the heavy lifting is on the word 'everyone'. We want to see inclusive pathways across not just the competitive side of what we do, but just in basic learn-to-swim programmes across Wales. It's become incredibly hard. I came under a bit of criticism before, after I left this room, for saying that it's predominantly white middle-class children learning to swim. At this moment in time, the average cost for a 30-minute session across Wales is nearly £8. According to StreetGames' last report, the disposable or the money left over after all bills are paid in a normal household in Wales is about £3.52. So, most families can't afford even a half an hour swimming lesson, which is pretty scary stuff. We've 100,000 children in Learn to Swim. I think you can work out what that demographic looks like.

So, how do we bring our vision to life? We're working extremely hard to make it inclusive. We want every child in Wales to be able to swim; it's a life skill. I think everyone will agree that's very, very important. Just to highlight that point, moving over to school swimming, since I've been in this room, we've gone from 42 per cent of children who can swim leaving key stage 2, year 6, down to 35 per cent. So, in all the time I've been out doing my work with the teams, and there's some great work going across Sport Wales and Swim Wales and lots of communities across Wales, it's dropped 6 per cent, 7 per cent since the last time I spoke here. Nothing's been done on a macro level. So, 23,000 children left key stage 2 unable to swim. So, they've gone into secondary school in September just gone unable to swim. Since COVID, if you multiply that up, there'll be 100,000 children next year unable to swim out in the world. So, the leveller for us is school swimming. We're focusing on that, because that cuts across all of the demographics, no matter what background, religion, or where you come from. So, we're really seeing an effect—'it's got worse' is my bullet point.

Yes, just really quickly. Obviously, equipment and transport are barriers—very obvious barriers—to sport, aren't they. Just on Swim Wales, I used to swim in Pontypool, so I'm travelling from Usk to Pontypool seven days a week for 13 years. That's a lot of travel cost there. Travel cost has got to be putting people off coming to the swimming lessons. It's not just that swimming lesson cost is it; it's all of the cost that comes into it, and that's just one example. There are multiple sports obviously we could talk about. I just want to pick up on what you said at the end, because I was going to mention school swimming and because I've heard that that is actually going to be a thing that people are looking to cut down, rather than bolster up. So, that, coupled with what you said before, is a problem, isn't it?

Diolch for the question. The Member is absolutely spot on. On the transportation, especially in rural areas, there's a massive disproportion, and we see that even with—. With headteachers, they have a decision to make, and—I have four daughters; I think I said before—I've put myself in that position, as I've been a primary school governor. I volunteered for two or three years to do that in Cardiff and I've seen at first hand the primary schools—. I feel for them, because they're leaving a deficit at the end of the year, so they've got decisions to make, but if there is £3,000 in the budget and it's between an IT suite, buying iPads, or taking the kids in a minibus or a coach to swimming lessons—. Estyn will come in and talk about IT; they won't come in and talk about physical activity or swimming, or key life skills. That's the reality. So, our recent—we do it voluntarily—survey across all schools in Wales, of 1,600, roughly, primary schools, and 50 per cent do and 50 per cent don't take part in swimming. That's very much a kind of flip of a coin—which headteachers you're talking to and where they've come from and, typically, if you trace it back, they swam themselves and they put a value on swimming. We are working with the department for education and we've had a couple of meetings, but it's been slow. We really need to collaborate on this.

Thank you, Fergus.

How does inflationary pressure impact on sports, compared to the rest of the economy—so, the whole economy? Do you think it's impacted on the sports and leisure sector more?

Would you like to take that?

Yes. From my perspective, netball, if you compare it to some other sports equipment-wise, it's relatively cheap to play. You need a good pair of trainers, otherwise you will get injured, but you don't need bats, rackets, et cetera. You do, obviously, need all the additional costs in terms of travelling, club fees, member fees, et cetera. But my point is that, even in a sport like ours that it's relatively cheap to participate in, we are still having hundreds of applications to our performance support fund, our participation support fund, which we established last year when we got the extra cost-of-living support money, which has now been taken away, but we can't then say to our members, 'Oh, you're not living in deprivation any more. We can't support you'. So, we've maintained those funds and we're seeing more applications every year to those funds. In a way, it's great that we're reaching people in areas of need, but, by virtue of the fact that we're getting more applications, it's a very real issue. To Fergus's point, there's less disposable income in the household, and sport is one of those hobbies that does have a positive impact on people's mental health, but it's a tough decision for them to make when they don't have the money.

Is that money used, rather than paying a fee to take part, or for transportation—? What's that money used for?

Our support fund?

Yes.

It can be anything. It can be a pair of trainers, it can be a bus pass, it can be club fees, it can be partially funding their fees to come and compete for Wales. Sadly, we have to ask people to pay to play for their country at the lower age groups, but the performance support fund can offset that. So, it's a wide range of things. It's sport bras—a very real issue for women and girls, as it's very expensive to get a good-quality one. So, anything that they need, really, within reason.

Yes. Okay.

Andrew.

If I could add, obviously, we've had the 10.5 per cent cut to the sports budget, which has been handed down to the members in terms of 3.5 per cent. So, there's less money for our members, the national governing bodies and other partners. That means that they've got difficult decisions to make. Sometimes, they might need to put membership fees up in some cases, where they put the membership fee for the club up, or they put membership fees up for the individual. And then, if you think about the clubs that are actually delivering the sport locally, they're using leisure centre facilities or other local authority facilities, which need to be paid for, and those prices have gone up so that local authorities can meet their requirements and take as much income as they can generate. So, the cost to the club has gone up and that, then, obviously, hits back to the participant. So, the participant might have to pay increased fees to be part of the national governing body, or they might have to pay increased fees to be part of the club, and, in some cases, they just won't be able to do that. So, in the sport sector, we almost get a double or even triple hit—the bus being the triple hit in terms of what Fergus said with education. I was on the CLOW group, which is the chief leisure operators in Wales, a couple of weeks ago, and they were reporting that, although school swimming is affordable, they're seeing a big reduction because the headteachers aren't paying for the buses any more, because they can't afford the buses. So, in sport, we're getting almost a triple hit in terms of the budget cuts, because all of the other partners are so important to us and they've had cuts also.

I remember discussing that last year, about access to swimming baths for schoolchildren, and there was a suggestion, as each local authority has to procure school transport, they could add social value under that. So, under the social value element, they could say, 'Will you provide free transport to swimming baths or to medical appointments, as part of that procurement process?' And I don't think it was ever taken up. But, you know, you try and think of anything, don't you, because it's such an important issue. But, the inflationary pressures that have been mentioned before by local authorities, about swimming baths, and the cost of heating swimming baths is so expensive now, isn't it, with the rising costs of energy, is that something that's come across your desk as an impact?

Another very good question. If I comment on the Member's first point, a lot of these things could be solved with collaboration. Again, I think this is my fifth time at a committee in my eight years in the job, so I've always been very grateful for being asked to provide evidence and give a voice for our activities and sport. But you do feel yourself going round the same topics, and that collaboration piece, if I look back to my work outside of sport, in business, getting these groups together to problem solve—so, education, transport and sport and health—in the same room is a very, very rare, if not impossible, thing to do. So, I would look at all of the members, with the REACH Network and the power that you guys have, to help us with that.

The second ask—. Interestingly—every five years, we do a facilities review—just to answer the second part, 80 per cent of our pools in Wales now, just under 500 accessible pools—. So, if we take out the Bannatynes, the David Lloyds, the university pools, the colleges and schools et cetera, we look at 22 local authority-owned pools, about 260 pools, and 80 per cent of those pools are 20 years or older, and 50 per cent of them were built prior to 1979, which is pretty scary. There were only two new builds over the last 10 years and only 11 sites out of the 260, in 22 local authorities, have had any sort of refurbishment, from a lick of paint to new stairs to changing rooms, which is very, very sad. Only 20 per cent, one in five, have undertaken sustainability measures. So, to the Member's point, they are highly inefficient. We have launched Aquazero, which is a sustainability programme, which we bring in with our own money. We have had some help from the Welsh Government and from other outside agencies that we've gone out to collaborate with ourselves, to bring in some know-how, just to point to 15 cost saving measures that pools can take—covers for pools and lighting and different ways of heating pools. So, there is an interest there, and I think our contribution could be huge to the net-zero target of 2030 for the Welsh Government—the aquatic and the pools themselves could make a huge contribution to that—but, unfortunately, the take-up is—. And the reason why it's a low take-up is down to costs.

So, capital expenditure is really important as well as revenue, which was being discussed earlier.

Yes. Thanks, Chair. Sorry, I'm going to be a pain throughout this committee, I can see it. As well as, obviously, the vital importance of getting anyone swimming for the life skills et cetera that we've discussed, and the physical benefits, mental health benefits, all of that, we have to also think big. We have to be competing with the rest of the UK. We have to ensure that we've got equality in terms of north-south in Wales. Am I right in saying that there is no Olympic pool in north Wales? Because we have to, even when we're short of money, think about those bigger investments to attract people into the sport and to keep them in Wales swimming. Is that right?

I'll answer that quickly.

Please, yes.

I came into the role in 2016, and I think one of the first questions I had at the time was, 'What about a 50m pool in north Wales? There isn't one.' The sad thing is that the competitions that—. We run eight national competitions a year; we license about 130 between local club galas and regional events, et cetera, et cetera. We've got to go to Liverpool for our Welsh national long-course 50m. We have to go to Liverpool, and take children and kids, young people—thousands; I'm not talking tens and hundreds, but thousands—across to Liverpool, which is, quite frankly, embarrassing, not to have that facility. I've had many conversations. One of your colleagues, Ken Skates, has helped me with conversations in Wrexham over the years. We've had various different conversations. To build Cardiff international pool down the road back in the early 2000s was £32 million. The last quote I had, which was only last month—we had some leisure centre architects in Cardiff with us—to build the equivalent in north Wales would be £55 million. So, with a capital budget of £8 million from the Welsh Government to Sport Wales over two years, I think you can see the gap. So, I won't go on any more.

That leads me nicely on to my next question. If Sport Wales receive the same funding next year, in the next budget, as this year, and the cuts, basically, what impact would that have, then, on being able to deliver sports in Wales?

Andrew.

I think there are some interesting numbers year on year, aren't there, Andrew.

Yes. Over recent weeks, we've tracked what the data should be. So, I mentioned earlier 2012. We've pretty much gone down ever since then if you look at the inflationary index. If we had followed that, if we had tracked that investment into Sport Wales over that period of time, we'd be at £50 million now. That's the investment that we should be at if you follow the 2012 figure. The reality is we're at £20 million. The members are continually being asked to deliver more for sport. We know the power of sport. We expect sport to deliver more, but there's no more money coming and they're going to push back. They're saying to me, 'Well, there's nothing more we can do than revert to core services if the funding stays what it is.' If it's worse, if it reduces any further—. Brian Davies spoke two weeks ago about the impact that would have on Sport Wales. Sport Wales should be commended for what they've done in terms of absorbing this year. They've worked very hard in a very short space of time over the new year to just inflict the 3.5 per cent cut on our members. But, if that happens again or if it's a standstill budget, there are going to be serious issues for a lot of our members in terms of what they can deliver.

We know the impact of Wales on the world stage when we go to football world cups, rugby world cups. Vicki's netball team went to South Africa and represented us on the world stage, and hockey in India in the men's recently. The power that can—. the British Council's report on sports diplomacy tells us everything that we need to know about what we do. We always hear, ourselves, about how we punch above our weight in sport. Personally, I think that goes against us. We should be just proud of the achievements that we do on a shoestring budget. 

But members are telling me that they just won't be able to deliver more; they'll have to cut back national teams or the grass roots of the game. All of the social impact work that we're doing that we can be trusted to do in our sector isn't being done or can't be done, and what we'd like to see is work more collaboratively outside of the sport budget, to see more money come into sport to deliver on other social agendas, be it period poverty—. We've got brilliant people working in our sector who can deliver on that. For the Welsh Government, we should be working more collaboratively on bringing more money into sport so that we can do a lot more. We've got the power to do that. Success is very much in our DNA working in sport.

I was going to say the Welsh Government said that their budgets were £700 million less than when they were set in 2021, so we have to look at different ways, they're saying, as well, of delivering. But that impact is probably the same across—. Is it the same across the UK as a whole as well, or is just here in Wales, the percentage of spend on sport and leisure?

We meet regularly as sport associations with our counterparts—the Scottish Sports Association and the Federation of Irish Sport, the Northern Ireland Sports Forum, the Sport and Recreation Alliance in England. When I was telling them about the budget cuts that we had in our January meeting, they were surprised, they were sympathetic. They weren't experiencing the same as we were. It was very much just us that were going through these issues. We had a really interesting sports conference that the Welsh Government and Sport Wales put on in Cardiff City Stadium in December 2022, not long into my time in this role. And we had a chap over from Norway talking about how brilliant Norway is at sport. It was fantastic to see, and, at the end, we found out in the Q&A that Norway put £55 per head into sport, and they’re delivering outstanding, world-class athletes across all manner of sports. In Wales, we’re about £5 or £6 a head. Slovenia is £8 a head, Australia £10, New Zealand £14, Ireland £27.50. We’re very much short-changed here in Wales per head, and that needs to change.

Thank you. Vicki, I need to bring you in.

It’s just a very real example, I think, in answer to your first question. So, we are currently ninth in the world—we’re the highest ranked Welsh sports team, to my knowledge. If I’m incorrect, I apologise to whoever. Lacrosse are ninth as well, but we tend to participate a little bit more regularly. But we are higher than rugby—I did check the other day, following our meeting. And we have always had an ambition in our 2030 strategy, which is titled, 'Bigger, Better, Bolder', and our ambition has been top six. Up until 18 months ago, that was a reality. We could make that happen. Sadly, in the last few weeks, we’ve had to revise that strategy and look at maintaining ninth, and bobbing between sort of eighth and tenth. And it is because of money, sadly. We don’t have the funds to travel to Fiji, to New Zealand, to Jamaica, and play them. And if you don’t play, you don’t get the ranking points you need.

England, our counterparts, who we get on very well with, have just moved up to second in the world, because they’ve been to Australia, they’ve been to New Zealand for a four-week tour, and they’ve played and they’ve had some good wins over there. We have 100 young women and girls in our pathway that are incredible netballers. That could really give us the quality we need on court to get us to top six, but, as it stands, with the budget pressures for us, we can’t give them those opportunities to prove themselves. We end up playing Scotland, Northern Ireland, et cetera, again and again, which is just not going to cut the mustard in terms of our ambition.

No. Diolch, Vicki. I know Siân has to leave at 11:30, so, in a moment, I'm going to go to Siân for her questions, but I know Fergus wanted to add something to this as well.

Yes. I just wanted to say that I’ve had the pleasure of working with Andrew and his team—I’ve been on the board of WSA for seven years now, and vice-chair of the organisation—and there are smaller sports, and some great sports out there, who are doing amazing things on the international stage. And it’s just such a shame when we see, internally—and you guys have a huge agenda and portfolio in front of you—the great work that’s going on and getting hit with these costs.

Selfishly, just to say, we put six swimmers, with five in the Olympic team with Team GB, and one in the Paralympic team, so six in total, which is a record for Swim Wales in its 127 years, and brought back five medals—three gold medals and two silver—compared to two gold in Tokyo. We just blew it away. We are cock-a-hoop, to use one of my mother’s words. We’re delighted with the performance, but its tinged with sadness, because, obviously, we had a 10 per cent reduction in our performance budget, and we’re looking at the same again. It’s demoralising when you look at all of our staff, all of our teams who are working on these things, who work over a four-year cycle, and to produce those absolutely history-making achievements, and then to be told, 'Your reward is a 10 per cent cut in your performance budgets', when everyone around us is getting the opposite.

I’m also a board member with Aquatics GB. We’re looking at an increase from UK Sport, because swimming and aquatics is the No. 1 Olympic sport right now, post Paris. So, we’re looking at an increase. We’re being rewarded for what we’ve done on the international stage, not punished.

Vicki.

Two examples from netball. Less funding means fewer staff, but we still have functions we need to deliver, so we've collaborated with Basketball Wales in a joint comms officer post, which is working even better than I expected. But the problem we now have is that there is now enough work being generated, probably, to split that post out into two full-time posts. But, in terms of collaboration, that's efficient for us in the hours this individual is doing, but also the learning that has had is accelerating our work. I'm also on the women's sport accelerator programme that's a partnership between the department of trade and Deloitte, so I just came back from London yesterday. We are actively seeking investment into our pro franchise—Cardiff Dragons; you may have heard of it—and actively seeking sponsorship to try and get money from commercial sources into sport, because we know and we acknowledge that the core funding is declining for us. So, we've been proactive and we've tried to look at other ways in partnership with our England Netball counterparts, but also other sports as well. Our commercial strategy has been in play for around three years and it has been successful. We've been able to reduce our reliance significantly on Sport Wales funding, but there's still a massive hole to fill, and we are still able to do less and less each year, because the total money we have is still less. Apologies, I don't know if I answered your question about collaboration, but, hopefully, the cross-UK women's sport accelerator is a great example of a really good programme, but I believe I'm the only female from Wales on it.

That raises other questions. Did either of you—?

As a real quick answer, we had very low numbers in Cardiff for school swimming. It was well publicised. Cardiff went out with their own figures. Cardiff Council have engaged with Cardiff Met, and there's an organisation called Sport Cardiff. So, with that team—so Swim Wales, us, leisure operators, the likes of GLL and Parkwood et cetera—we all got in a room and we took what was, I think, something like 17 or 18 per cent across 93 Cardiff schools, which was a shocking uptake of school swimming, and it's closer to 90 per cent now. So, if you talk about collaboration and how to get around that, it's been painful but it's been rewarding in the sense that we've had a great product, a great result from that. We've just got to do that 21 more times. Some of the lowest figures, unfortunately, in school swimming—I'm not going to name and shame; we've got all the figures across 22 local authorities—are in coastal areas, with a lot of rurality and a lot of high demographic. So, you can probably work that out yourself, but that's quite—. When you've got 55 deaths due to drowning last year and 23,000 kids out there right now who can't swim every single year, it is concerning, but the collaboration has given me a little bit of hope.

I was talking more, actually, about collaboration in terms of the finance—the financial aspects. It's great to hear that there's collaboration going on around swimming, and it's concerning to hear about the coastal areas, but, of course, they are large rural areas, and the transport costs, going back to that point, does affect them more than maybe a city like Cardiff. But what I'm looking for is evidence of collaboration in order to mitigate the financial losses, in terms of joint human resources work, for example, in terms of restructuring so that there is more joined-up work happening rather than silo working in terms of the costs that are involved in running your organisations.

Laura, I will come back to you, I promise; I did see your hand. Andrew.

At the WSA, we're the membership body for the sport and leisure sector. Collaboration is one of our strategic objectives. It's also one of our values that we live and breathe every day as a team, and shared services is something we launched as part of this strategic plan about 18 months ago. So, we've got an in-house accountant who works for us now, and that's been a really successful membership offer to our members. They have to pay a little bit more to have this service, but we're now servicing 11 members across our membership with bookkeeping services, so they no longer have to go to a high-street bookkeeper or appoint in-house or rely on somebody from the board who might not have the time do so, and so the level of accountancy is improved. We've delivered a really popular service at a really good cost that's saving money for the members. We've also rolled that into content and comms, so we're delivering social media accounts for six members, and we've also just launched and are announcing the appointment today of a new safeguarding manager. The responsibilities on our members for safeguarding increase all the time and it's a really imperative area. It's something that you can't compromise on at all, and the requirements on national governing bodies are more and more. So, we've appointed a safeguarding manager that will help some of our members to deliver the safeguarding services that are needed. So, we, as an organisation, are working on shared services.

We've also got a procurement portal for sport, working with a partner, where members can go and try to get better energy deals. They can go into an energy basket to reduce costs on that. And we've also got a scheme with electric vehicle charging points. We've got real ambition at the WSA to put EV charging points into car parks at sport and leisure centres, football and rugby clubs, and all other sports clubs up and down the country, because there are not enough EV charging points in Cardiff to realise our climate change ambitions as a nation. What's been frustrating is that, while a lot of these clubs have taken up the EV charging offers, they've got to contract and they're being stopped with planning issues at a local authority level, and that's a really, really drawn-out process. So, there's money there to be made for our clubs that can be new money and that can help soften the blow when there are cuts, but there are hurdles in the way as well.

Diolch, Andrew. Laura, you had a supplementary, I think. 

Yes. I'm aware of a bunch of kickboxers at the moment who are representing Wales in Austria. I think the world championship is actually this weekend, so good luck to them. But there was absolutely no money whatsoever to help them go in terms of the travel costs and things like that. If they hadn't raised private funding from companies nearby to their sports hall, a lot of those children wouldn't have been able to actually go on that trip and represent their country, even though their talent is high. And I just find that quite disturbing. And it's not sustainable to rely on a tiling company, for example, to step up and help those children, is it?

It's a very common picture. The Member makes a very valid point. It's a very common picture. We have that across water polo. It's fully funded. It doesn't get any money from Sport Wales because it's not a Commonwealth Games sport, and it doesn't get any money from the UK lottery because it's not an Olympic sport. It's caught between the two, so where does it go? It looks to the NGB. We do everything we can, and it's scraps—it's a couple of thousand pounds, maybe five in a good year, if we can afford it. And that's our decision to do that. But they're highly talented people representing their country, paying for their own flights, their own travel. It goes back to my original point around demographics. We're trying to make our national teams and our pathways reflect a modern 2024 Wales, we're looking at the future generations Act and all of the things that we've collectively signed up to, and we're very, very far away from that, because they have to pay for their own. And we're going to have that again—we're going to have people who can afford it wearing a Welsh jersey, in whatever sport it is.

Andrew. No. Who would like to go? Vicki.

I was actually going to defer to Andrew around the Welsh Sports Foundation.

Yes, sure. Another one of our strategic goals this term was to launch the Welsh Sports Foundation. That's a registered charity in Wales. The sports foundation aims to take away the financial barriers for children to access sport. We've run a pilot project—we've tried to get funding for that outside the sport budget. We recognise that it shouldn't be there to replace the existing sport budget; it should be new money to support those that can't afford to access sport, and that gap is getting wider each year, sadly.

We launched a pilot project in the last couple of months from money that we've raised ourselves through fundraising and through some small private donations. The two pilot projects that we ran, one in Caernarfon and one in Cardiff, were really, really successful in terms of getting kids accessing sport for a small period of time, but also for the rest of the year. But it's also a very sad story that we were inundated with requests in just a small area—two small catchment areas of Wales. We've got some fantastic case studies to show the real issues that we've got.

In terms of the Member's question on trusts, we applied to a private trust for a significant amount of money. We also spoke to the Welsh Government about the foundation. We applied for the child poverty grant that was recently announced by the Welsh Government. That was rejected. And the response that we had from the private trust was that this is an initiative that should have support from the Welsh Government or Public Health Wales, and we've been invited to submit a further application in the future, but the funder would want to see others involved. So, there's an example where some Welsh Government money, pump primed, could help us access further money from outside of Welsh Government budgets to support children that can't access because they can't afford to.

Fergus.

We launched our Cynnwys framework here at the Senedd in July. It was well supported by some of your colleagues and a lot of the community. We had all of our diversity partners—35-plus partners—in the room. So, we are very focused on that. I go back to our vision of aquatics for everyone for life. So, we're trying to make that part of our DNA. It's extremely important to us. But I've only got 30-odd full-time staff, so, on the Member's point about getting across this, I'll go back to what I said: I came into the sport eight years ago, and I think it's more onerous now, as a CEO, and this is not getting the violin out, because I love my job and I'm very committed to that, but the job has got an awful lot harder. The remit for NGBs has got an awful lot wider, so I have to be across multiple levels of safeguarding and welfare, I have to be across governance standards, I have to be across performance standards and pathway. We have increasing membership, increasing growth, which is fantastic, and we have to drive that, bring more people into the sport. We're fighting on a number of different fronts with less money, with fewer resources, with fewer people et cetera. We have no problem tackling all these remit letters that we get from sport. We have no problem with the principles of what we've been asked to do, but it's very, very hard to keep doing it to the required level.

Thank you. Diolch, Fergus.

Aelodau, we've got just over 20 minutes left of the session. I know that Carolyn and Laura have a lot of other questions they'd like to ask. We'll go to Carolyn to ask her final set of questions and then to Laura, but, for everyone to be aware, we have around 20 minutes left because the witnesses have very kindly agreed to stay for an extra 10 minutes—we're very grateful to you. Over to you, Carolyn.

Fergus, you talked about making swimming statutory, and we had local authorities in earlier that were concerned that, if sport or some leisure and arts are made statutory, as the Arts Council of Wales have called for, that needs to come with funding as well because they're really cash-strapped as well, like everybody. So, your thoughts on that, really, going forward—have you got anything that you can add to that?

Yes, my thoughts are very simple on it. We've done the calculations. To cut across all of the transportation issues, the rurality issues that the Members have already alluded to and mentioned, to cut across all of that, we have put a proposal to the previous sport Minister, Dawn Bowden, and we've been in front of Jeremy Miles, when he was in the education brief, and his team. So, we've discussed with officials, discussed the practicalities around the universal school swimming offer, which would cut across all of that, which would cost £4.4 million a year. And when we look at that in the context of an education budget or a health budget or the wider culture budget—I'm not going to say £4.4 million is peanuts, but there's the return for £4.4 million investment—and we look at free school meals and the fantastic work that's been done across social care, we don't think that's a particularly big ask. And it goes away; we take it off the table. Every single child will leave key stage 2 with the ability to swim. We know it's the No. 1 gateway sport that opens up children's confidence, it opens up their physical literacy to other sports, as well as giving them a life skill. So, it's £4.4 million per year, which I think, in—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon?

Including transport.

That's providing transport. That's getting two school years to the pool and back for 10 days, across every single primary school.

Can you share those workings out with us? That would be useful.

Of course, yes.

Thank you.

Like I said, it's been in front of a couple of Ministers and officials already. And we'll be banging that drum as long as I'm sitting in this chair.

The new curriculum is about having more variety, isn't it—extending the school day. So, I suppose after-school activities, like netball and basketball, could be part of that, as well. I know that teachers are struggling, as well, so how do we make sure that that's enabled, do you think?

Yes. We're really fortunate in netball that there's a lot of confidence amongst teachers to deliver it. We see a lot of primary and secondary schools entering our national competitions, and 64 per cent of our membership is school-age children, and then adults and toddlers make up the rest. So, we've sent a pack to every school in Wales for two years in a row now, because we can't provide an officer, like some other sports have been able to do previously, to every school—we don't have the funding or the support to do that. So, we've sent a pack to every single school in Wales that has just given teachers that confidence to deliver diverse netball, whether it's a lunchtime or after-school thing.

Talking about quoting to officials, I went to a panel where period dignity was discussed around three years ago now, and I said that netball and hockey were the two quite predominant school sports for females and that we were uniquely placed to deliver a really robust period dignity project to every secondary school in Wales for around £300,000 a year, which is what we worked out, but there wasn't the appetite to do that. But there's a netball or hockey promoter, whether it's a teacher or a player, in every single school in Wales, without a doubt. So, it seemed to me like quite a great fit and another collaborative project, but there just wasn't the appetite or, seemingly, not the funding to do that. Yet, it would probably save a lot of money in the long run.

And that sort of falls into the social prescribing agenda, again, doesn't it, which we talked about earlier, and the preventative role that sports and culture and arts are part of. So, with Jeremy Miles, you said you had—[Inaudible.] Of course, he's now the health Minister. I know that the Health and Social Care Committee have also called for a preventative category of spend in future Welsh Government budgets. So, is that something that you would be looking for, as well?

That's really great to hear. Sport is naturally preventative. We know as a fact—and Andrew will probably be able to quote this better than me—that people who live active and healthy lifestyles aren't so much of a financial burden, dare I say it, to the likes of the NHS. We've actually launched seated netball, which we take into care homes. We've also taken it onto acute mental health wards in hospitals, and it is tackling not only physical fitness, but also loneliness and mental health issues, as well. But we cannot get money to roll it out across Wales. We can't afford to do it with the money we already get from Sport Wales, and we just can't—. No grant agencies are giving us the money to do it and we're banging our heads against the wall a little bit, because we know that it's good for people. We're gathering evidence to show that it's great for people of all ages, but people just don't seem willing to come on that journey with us. So, it's great to hear that there's a bit of a remit for that.

Local authorities talked about using the shared prosperity fund, because they haven't got the basic funds themselves. They are having to draw in grant funding from the shared prosperity fund, from Betsi Cadwaladr, or whatever. So, it sounds like there should maybe be better collaboration, or joined-up thinking as well, working with Sport Wales and netball and swimming, to see how that money can be spent.

I'm going to bring in Andrew and then I think we will need to move on to Laura, because she wanted to come in, if that's all right.

Okay.

Okay. Lovely.

Just to add, we would welcome any collaboration with health. We have been banging that drum for a long, long time. We know that every heart attack in Wales costs £2,400. There are 5,600 a year, and it's over £13 million that that will cost the NHS. I'm not saying that sport and physical activity can reduce all of those, but it can go a long way. That £13.3 million is over 60 per cent of our budget in sport. So, there is, absolutely, collaboration needed between sport and health—some joined-up thinking.

We have got some brilliant initiatives for rehabilitation as well. Bowls Wales works with stroke survivors. There's a brilliant story that we told at our Welsh Sports Association sports awards in June, and that's re-engaging stroke survivors who have either played bowls previously or not played bowls at all. But, this is back in a community setting where, naturally, the sport of bowls is good for their co-ordination and to recover from that illness.

So, there's so much more that we could do, but we can't do anymore on the money that we have got. What we are saying, and the message is loud and clear from our members, is that we can do so much more, but we need the finance from outside the sport budget as well to do that. 

Thank you. 

Thank you. I just wanted to ask a question that has been touched upon a couple of times by other Members now, but I just wanted to get, in greater depth, your thoughts on it. It's about collaboration. Of course, as we all know, in Wales, it rains a lot here. In the winter months, with rugby and football, for example, at the junior level it just shuts down. There are hardly any matches played. There are hardly any training sessions because the pitches are waterlogged, and there are only so many rotations that you can make to ensure that some games still get played. So, we are immediately disadvantaging those children because the facilities aren't there. To what extent, including the benefits to netball and swimming now as well, do we look closer into opening up twenty-first century schools, which were meant to be community schools after hours. There are barriers to doing that—maybe safety, the cost of having staff after hours, and things like that, coming out of already stretched school budgets, whatever it might be. What conversations have you had on opening up and using those fantastic, in a lot of cases, facilities that we have on people's doorsteps, in lower socioeconomic areas, actually, a lot of it? What conversations have been had about that, to share those resources? Thanks.

Vicki.

I'd like to share a really good example. Rhondda Netball is a charity, surprisingly, in the Rhondda valley. It has around 1,200 women and girls coming through its programme every week. The majority of its sessions are in schools, after hours. It has staff who have been trained and insured as keyholders, and they go in and they use secondary and primary schools after hours, and they are able to really maximise those facilities. That's a unique example. It doesn't happen across Wales, so there are definitely learnings, from our perspective, on why that works so well. I think that it fulfils a unique need in the Rhondda, where rugby and football are prioritised over netball and, potentially, other female sports. So, they have answered a real issue there. But there is certainly learning to be done across Wales, from our perspective.

In that case, what work are all of you doing, including the WSA, in promoting that best practice that is obviously happening in the Rhondda valley? Thank you.

Well, it's quite clear that we need to do more on this. The education sector we need to collaborate more with. There are some very good examples where some of our members—. I'm aware that football has work closely with Cardiff Council, and they have opened up some of their facilities. The excellent new facility at Fitzalan High School is being used across the weekend for football as well, and, I think, for swimming. So, there is more work to do in terms of this. As to whether that is the remit of the WSA, it's absolutely not, but we can collaborate with our members and all of the other key stakeholders in that. But it's a challenge, and it very much depends, in certain areas, on who the headteachers are. I'm the volunteer chairman of a local football club, and one of our teams has benefited from using a school facility because somebody on the staff is a parent. Unfortunately, that's the way it is—it's very much localised and not joined up.

Fergus wanted to come in, I think. 

Very briefly, Chair; I know you're managing the time. I agree. I'm not going to sugar-coat it. I think our approach to this is very disjointed. My own team have a remit. They go out and look for these conversations, but I think the road mapping, the signposting between sport and education at a high level, at policy level and then down to us, could be much better, much more joined up. It's not boiling-the-ocean stuff; it's fairly simple stuff, but I don't think the teams are having these planning discussions. I think it's a real missed opportunity because the principle and the concept are fantastic around twenty-first century schools. It talks to a lot of the things we've discussed today, but the signposting needs to be better.

So, how do we get sport and education into a room? And it could just be at sport policy officer level; it doesn't need to be over-egged. But it's not happening, and we find out very late on a lot of these things, or I'm cracking the whip and the teams are going in to ask questions. We've just done our own, fully funded by us, facility audit, like I said earlier on, across Wales, and we find things out—that something is happening in a particular local authority, but it's too late for intervention. 

And very quickly, it also helps we have 11 user groups in aquatics. I say this to everyone who's thinking about a pool. If it's 25m—it's never going to be a 50m; well, fingers crossed, one day—but if it's 25m and we talk about maximising the user group, make it available to other schools in the area for Learn to Swim, making it available for recreational swimming. We try and tick as many of those user groups off as possible because it all adds up to revenue, and it all adds up to sustainability, bringing more footfall in. So, by including us in that, we talk to all these user groups: 'We can help you design that facility in a pragmatic way'.  

Laura, back to you. 

Thank you. What else do you think that Sport Wales could do, beyond additional funding, to mitigate the impact of reduced funding on sport? 

There's certainly a lot that's being done very proactively recently. There's a lot of resilience projects that Sport Wales are doing that have started really well and are proving fruitful for some sports, but they are at the early stages. But those types of projects that are very much member led or member advised are really helpful, and are certainly making people in sport think differently about additional income or income-generation strategies. So, more of that, on top of the good work that they've already done, would be appreciated by me, for sure. 

I think I'll speak for Andrew and me quickly. They've pulled us all together and, with the WSA in support, they have initiated lots of discussions around the NGBs, around efficiency, around shared services, common working. They've brought in and paid for consultants to help galvanise our thoughts around how we can share resources, how we can all be more efficient, how we can do more with less. So, I commend Sport Wales, actually, in the last 12 months. No. 1, as Andrew alluded to, is they've taken a significant hit themselves—6 per cent or 7 per cent themselves, absorbing a lot of that. That's not sustainable. I really do feel for them. I think they're doing a great job under difficult circumstances, and they have brought us together to think—again, eight years in the job—very innovatively about how we can work together. That can't go on forever. The risk is—and I've been here over 27 years in business; I've been here before—you cut down to the bone and you keep delivering at a certain level, and people think that's okay and acceptable because you survive. We're just about hanging in there, and I think that's unfair and it's only going to go one way.

Thank you. What lessons do you think we can learn? Obviously, we need more money put into sport and culture in Wales, but what lessons do you think we could learn from other parts of the UK and beyond, into Europe and worldwide? Who is doing something really good that we could probably, would you say, put into practice in Wales here? Are there any examples out there that we should know about?

There are probably several examples, but it all comes down to the funding. Scotland have got some really good initiatives. We're working closely with the Scottish Sports Association, looking at some of the great initiatives they're doing. They do a brilliant women and girls week in collaboration with the Scottish Members of Parliament, where it’s cross-party led, and we'd love to do something similar here in Wales. We need the finance to do that, but I think it would have a massive impact on women's and girls' sports at all levels: participation, role models, leaders, board members—everything is covered in that. So, that's a really great example that we'd love to lead on at the WSA.

But then, the one figure that I missed out earlier when I quoted other nations is that, for this Scottish term of Government, the Government up there have committed £100 million to sport throughout this term. At £100 million, with about half their population, that would be the £50 million figure, which is the same figure that I alluded to that we should have had from 2012, had we tracked the index.

So, what's absolutely clear from our membership is the reach of our sport, and I think, probably, in other countries, they recognise that reach a lot better than we do. For us, sport should be the national megaphone—the powerful voice that resonates across every community in every corner of Wales. We can deliver on everything the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 in Wales wants to deliver upon, whether that's a healthier Wales, the Welsh language, cohesive communities, a more resilient Wales—we can do that in sport. And I guess the sector's just frustrated and disappointed because that's probably not recognised outside of our sector, because, if it was, you just wouldn't cut the budget; you would give us more money to deliver more on those agendas.

On that, to end then, Chair, there has been talk that the Welsh Government should move down the road—we've all discussed it today—of that preventative agenda and taking from each portfolio. Do you see that as the way forward, that we need to drive that? Obviously, sport would be an integral part of that in terms of health, in bringing communities together, increasing physical activity in groups that we really need to be focusing on—women—or whatever it might be. It's got so many benefits—sport, obviously. But do you see that as the way forward? Is that how we're going to try and overcome this, when it's coming out of those budgets—that sport can benefit?

Absolutely, and I hope that's a key theme that you've heard from all of us—that sport can be a wonderfully preventative measure. There'll be increased spending— homelessness, health, anti-social behaviour, older adults, and many more—but a lot of that spend, I imagine, goes into reactive measures to solve problems. Sport is preventative. We can get to the root of those problems across the board— of all the things that I mentioned, and more—and not necessarily get rid of those problems, but certainly help to minimise them. So, it's great to hear that that's on the agenda, but, please, yes, think of sport first, because we have such a wide reach and sport is very much part of the DNA of Wales and the UK, and it's something that people are generally aware of and familiar with, no matter who you are. So, yes, think of us as a problem solver across all of those issues you've mentioned.

Fergus.

I stood on a hill in Brecon with Dafydd Elis-Thomas and Vaughan Gething when they were both in their respective positions pre COVID, and there was a joint fund of £5 million between sport and health. It was a real success. I haven't seen anything since. There was real excitement about, 'We're breaking—'. It felt like a pilot; it felt like a phase 1 at the time, five or six years ago. It felt like maybe this was it—this was the time when we could deliver and we could show that collaboration between the two portfolios could work, and I haven't seen anything since, which is a real, real shame.

So, collaboration between the departments and pooling resources 100 per cent, but it's down to sport as well. We've got work to do around data and insights. We've got better over the last two or three years, but it's putting those business cases forward to the likes of health and education, to say, 'Look, we can help you with your mission'. So, that's on us to bring that to the table. There's a lot of good work being done already, led by Sport Wales, and a lot of our own, if we're lucky enough to have data and insight people in our organisations, which we do.

The second bit to that question is, I think, the commercial pound. So, in all the discussions I have with future potential sponsors or external organisations—some really big names—they're interested in supporting or working with sport, but all they see is the Welsh Government and other areas cutting, and they ask themselves, 'Well, why am I putting a pound in?' And we use this argument all the time: 'There's a lottery pound and there's an exchequer pound. Give us a commercial pound, and we can work together.' And they listen to that. They can see the national squads, they can see the great stuff on the international stage, they can see the pathway, and the equality, diversity and inclusion. There are loads of things we can sell, but they question the funding model in Wales for sport. It's going backwards, not forwards: why? That's the question mark. And they're afraid to commit because I think the signs are a bit strange.

And the final word to Andrew.

Diolch. My colleagues have hit the nail on the head. The only thing I would add to that is, obviously, we would welcome any additional funding. If it comes through health as preventative, that would be fantastic, but we also need to ring-fence and add more to the sport because that's what our core delivery is. We're brilliant at delivering sport in Wales. We've produced world champions in all different kinds of sports. We continue to do that, but we won't be able to do that in the future unless that sport budget goes up as well. So, we absolutely welcome additional funding from outside of sport, but the sport budget has to go up as well and not be compromised as a result of that.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you to the three of you very much for your evidence. There were some other questions that we had hoped to ask but we have run out of time for. Would it be all right if we wrote to you with those extra questions? Thank you so much. Thank you for being willing to be with us over the allotted time. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. There will be a transcript that will be sent to you to check that it's a fair record of what's been said, alongside those extra questions. Thank you very much indeed. Your evidence has been very useful. We really appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much again to the witnesses.