More support needed for inner cities

Mike Rowbottom on a culture shock for sport in winning National Lottery money

As the second wave of National Lottery awards for sports projects splashes another £18m around the country this week, anxious glances are being directed towards some conspicuously unwatered areas - namely Britain's inner cities.

In the wake of the controversy over the £13.5m of National Lottery funds which was used to buy Winston Churchill's papers, the Department of National Heritage can do without any further adverse publicity. But unless the balance of awards in the sporting domain is redressed, further embarrassment lies ahead.

The relative scarcity of award applications from inner cities has been noted, and the Sports Council has promised imminent but as yet unspecified action to redress the balance "within the constraints of current Government guidelines." In other words, not being seen to show unfair interest in particular projects i.e. soliciting.

There are still many individuals and organisations within British sport who find the whole subject of qualifying for a National Lottery grant bewildering. And to many, the idea that this is something which has to be actively bid for is something of a culture shock.

Some appear to be coping better than others. The biggest beneficiary of the latest round of awards is the University of Bath, which has received £2.66m towards a multi-sport complex. The South-West has done particularly well as a region, gaining more than £8m for 25 projects.

That success is partly a reflection of vigorous efforts by the regional Sports Council director to prepare the ground for bids and make sure relevant information about applying for awards was widely distributed.

Could a vigorous campaign not redress the perceived imbalance in inner city benefits? Might there not even be a case for changing the rules to allow a little positive discrimination?

When that question was put to the Sports Council's director general, Derek Casey, at this week's announcement of the latest awards, two members of the Lottery Awards panel, Adrian Moorhouse and Garth Crooks, craned forward alongside him to see how he would respond.

Casey ruled out encouraging, other than in a general way. To do anything else would be to open the organisation to the dread charge, soliciting. But where laying the groundwork for applications ends and soliciting begins is something of a grey area.

Official statistics also reveal that many traditional middle- class sports are taking the highest profile in the current operation. Among individual sports, those which have received the most awards are cricket (23), tennis (14) and bowls (10). And the list of sports which have applications under consideration tells the same story. Beneath football, with 139, comes cricket (126), bowls (90), hockey (30), sailing (26) and rugby union (24).

These sports are full of able, professional people well used to finding their way through paperwork and official channels. When Casey was asked if there was any concern that such middle-class strongholds were gaining disproportionate benefit from the Lottery, Crooks and Moorhouse nodded approvingly at the question. It is clearly a genuine concern for the 12 panel members, who see themselves, in Moorhouse's phrase, as "the Sports Council's conscience."

Two adjustments are being considered. The requirement for applicants to fund at least 35 per cent of any project through means other than the Lottery may be reduced. And the insistence that Lottery funds should be available for buildings and facilities, rather than the cost of running them, may be reviewed at the end of the year. A little movement on several fronts may yet change the inner city picture. There will be a fuss if it doesn't.