Scottish Athletics - Scottish Government and sportscotland Funding Cuts

I have just received the following email explaining that Scottish Athletics has received a cut from sportscotland of £140,000 means that in 2017/18 our budget investment from sportscotland has reduced from £1,030,000 (2016/17) to £890,000.
Funding for JogScotland in particular is being cut as explained in this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-39363818 which seems a bit short sighted considering the benefits it brings in get people active. However JogScotland is now seeking charitable status.

Scottish Athletic email in full:


Dear Member

Following the Board meeting of Scottish Athletics Ltd on Monday 20 March and confirmation from sportscotland, I thought it would be useful to give a detailed update to our members around the area of government funding cuts to sport in Scotland and the subsequent consequences for the governing body and our sport.

This topic has been well documented in the media over the last few weeks with the Scottish Government reducing the budget for sport by 8.3% (£3.4M). Along with the Scottish Government reduction, sportscotland have also received a significant reduction in Lottery funding as a result of poor Lottery sales over the last 12 months. The result is an overall reduction of 22% in the sportscotland budget for 2017/18.

Whilst making an extremely strong case for continuation at our existing funding levels, at a time when the sport is performing so well across all levels, we can confirm that Scottish Athletics Ltd has received a cut from sportscotland of £140,000. This means that in 2017/18 our budget investment from sportscotland has reduced from £1,030,000 (2016/17) to £890,000. However, this does include the jogscotland reduction which we were already aware of, and accounts for a very significant proportion of the cut.

Please be assured that our priorities do not change whatsoever and we are committed to ensuring our focus remains on supporting our membership and continuing to activate key programmes that help athletes, coaches, clubs, officials and volunteers to thrive and grow.

However, we have made some changes to jogscotland which, coupled with some efficiency savings around the business this year, will ensure we protect the delivery of those aspects of our core business out-lined above.

To elaborate further, the key area for change for the 2017/18 financial year involves the re-positioning of jogscotland towards a charitable partnership. We have entered into an initial 1 year equal partnership arrangement with the Scottish Association of Mental Health (SAMH) that will see the re-positioning of jogscotland with the ability to raise charitable funding to support the ongoing delivery of the programme. We are confident that the jogscotland programme will be enhanced further with the SAMH investment and program me resources.

We will continue to review other areas of potential cost savings through efficiencies and will update on this area in due course.

As a footnote, we are also aware of the Scottish Government’s announcement on April 4th stating that £2M will be invested into sport to cover some of the Lottery funding challenges. The statement from the government is clear that this investment will focus specifically on inequalities (including getting women into sport and on boards, LGBT, disadvantaged communities and under-represented groups), and getting the inactive active. We will certainly explore this one-off investment opportunity further to see where the sport can benefit in the short term.


Kind regards

Mark

Mark Munro
Chief Executive Officer
Scottish Athletics