UK Sport Set to Review ‘No Compromise’ Funding Policy

By Bradley Gains on October 28, 2014

There could yet be a further boost for British Basketball following reports of the recent lifeline by Sport England as UK Sport consider a change to their funding policy, as reported by the BBC.

The Telegraph reported Sport England’s funding offer of up to £500,000 as long as matched, but claimed that UK Sport wasn’t going to budge on its hard-nosed approach towards its funding and offer any support to British Basketball.

However, according to the BBC, UK sport are set to discuss its current policy:

The government agency is to launch a public consultation for the first time to decide its future strategy.

UK Sport invests £100m of National Lottery and government money into high-performance sport each year, and its medals-based policy has underpinned Britain’s recent Olympic and Paralympic success.

But there has been criticism of this method, and the review will be welcomed by sports such as basketball that have suffered funding cuts.

Earlier in the year, basketball was one of a handful of sports to have all of its funding completely withdrawn because of the ‘high risk’ due to little chances of winning a medal at the Rio Olympics. Pressure has been put on UK Sport to change their process and UK Sport chief executive Liz Nicholl revealed to the BBC that questions may need to be answered.

“We always listen to what sports are saying and give very careful consideration to whether that means we should be doing something differently,” added Nicholl.

“We’re hearing quite a few comments from team sports, particularly basketball, sports that are not funded by us in this cycle because they are more than eight years away from developing medal potential.

“And so, the questions we will be asking are: ‘Should we dig deeper? Should we extend our remit?'”

“We will review what we hear from the consultation, we will refine our thinking and agree a direction of travel in February.”

Click here to read the full article on BBC Sport.

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