ABSTRACT
Since sport first emerged as a recognized responsibility of government in the late 1960s, the British government has maintained an interest in community sport participation and has occasionally expressed concern in relation to participation levels but has rarely adopted community sport as a priority. In contrast, elite sport, over a period of ten years or so, has been established as the central priority of sport policy and benefited accordingly; there has been substantial investment in specialist training facilities, extensive support staff and generous personal grants to athletes. Since the mid 1990s, school/youth sport has also attracted substantial additional lottery and Exchequer investment in both staff and facilities. Policy making in relation to community sport has tended to be confined to the symbolic level, indicated by repeated alarmed expressions of disquiet at the low levels of participation, repeated expressions of determination to address the issue and a plethora of shortlived initiatives, but little evidence of a sustained and well-resourced program designed to attract more people to take part in sport on a regular basis. Explaining the relative neglect of community sport by government is a central concern of this chapter and will be considered more directly below. However, an initial step in the analysis is to locate community sport within the broader landscape of sport and sport policy in England.
