§ Mr. Peter AinsworthTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when the error on pages 46 and 47 of the Government's annual report regarding the UK Sports Institute was first brought to his attention. [134100]
§ Mr. Chris SmithThe passage referred to in the Government's annual report could have been misleading, and certainly did not give a full picture of progress in the development of the UK Sports Institute.
To date, over £50 million of Lottery funding has been committed by Sport England to facilities for the English network of the UK Sports Institute. In May/June 2000, the water-based hockey pitches in Birmingham and Cannock were among the first completed new projects. Detailed designs and project development work have been 42W undertaken for the network sites at Sheffield, Manchester, Bath and Loughborough. The Stage Two Lottery application for athletics, judo, netball, table tennis, and general facilities at Sheffield has already been approved. Many more projects are well advanced and it is expected that the majority of the remaining Lottery applications, representing over £60 million of further investment in network facilities in England, will be made in the next six months.
In addition, the UKSI—Scottish Institute of Sport, funded by Sport Scotland, has been established and operating for 18 months and the Sports Council for Wales has been operating and developing UKSI Cymru for some time. Both have been providing a range of services direct to athletes including technical training and support, conditioning guidance and supervision, preventive and reactive sports medical support and sports science.
Across the UK as a whole, the Athlete Career and Education programme (ACE UK) is up and running, providing personal development courses to athletes to meet their individual needs, as well as a high performance coaching programme introduced to provide a range of sport and coach specific personalised programmes in IT skills through to specific training sessions.
I am arranging for copies of the UKSI Quarterly Update report for August 2000—produced by UK Sport—to be placed in the Libraries of both Houses to provide further information on progress of the UK Sports Institute.