Equality and diversity

We believe that sporting opportunities should be open to all and we are committed to:

• Developing a culture that enables and values the full involvement of all, embedding and promoting the principles of equality, through the delivery of inclusive, high quality sport
• Creating an environment in which all have equal opportunities to engage in high quality sport, whether as participants; competitors; volunteers; officials or administrators
• Responding to the diverse needs, capabilities and preferences of all, by ensuring appropriate levels of challenge
• Overcoming potential barriers for those individuals and groups currently under-represented as participants.

To ensure that this commitment is embedded we are:

• Working with equality organisations in sport and review the Equality Standard
• Challenge national govening bodies to consider how they can encourage the participation of currently under-represented groups
• Considering offering specific additional funding to smaller, less well funded sports which have the opportunity to appeal to under-represented communities.
• Actively seeking out opportunities to work with community groups capable of delivering ‘break through’ with different parts of the population.
• Ensuring that sports tackling drop-off do so with a balanced portfolio
• Looking at opportunities through the Innovation Fund to fund innovative approaches to encourage under-represented groups to participate more in sport.

Much of this work will managed by our  Equality & Diversity team.

A key role is to help partners such as governing bodies to deliver sporting opportunities to as many people as possible and particularly to groups who experience specific issues that may prevent them participating regularly in sport.

We do this by working directly with three national funded partners:

• English Federation of Disability Sport
• Sporting Equals
• Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation

and by developing partnerships with other equality groups.

There are a number of additional organisations who can provide further information both on equality within sport and on equality issues generally.

These include:

• UK Sport
• CCPR
• Pride Sports
• Equality & Human Rights Commission