Sport England and CIMSPA – a vital partnership

Tim Hollingsworth, CEO, Sport England

Catherine Baker, Director, Sport and Beyond

An interview with Tim Hollingsworth

Catherine Baker, Director of Sport and Beyond, interviewed Tim Hollingsworth, CEO of Sport England in the second keynote of the day.

Fourteen months into the role, Tim said he was just getting to understand the scale of the task involved in getting the nation active.

Towards an Active Nation

Tim Hollingsworth began by saying “We employ approximately 300 million people and we have pretty much £300 million of government money to spend. Both of those numbers are big, but they are fractional compared to the scale of what we want to achieve. We can no longer transact our way to get the nation more active. It’s not possible. That’s why our strategy is developing in a much more collaborative way.”

He said workforce had a key role to play in this and while Sport England’s current strategy – Towards an Active Nation – largely focuses on the end user, he believes Sport England’s role was to think about those who are seeking to create the right opportunity and environment for people to be active.

Collaboration throughout the sport and physical activity sector

He continued by stating “Purpose, people and place is my way to describe how our thinking is developing. The only way you can create genuine and meaningful long-term engagement is by working through the local environment and place. And within that is people. Because whether it is professional or volunteer, full time or part time, national or local roles, leadership, coaching or facilitating roles, that experience is critical. We have a responsibility and opportunity to reframe the nature of how we as an organisation, but more importantly, how we collectively work towards creating a more professional, more engaged. more supported and valued workforce.”

With the current Sport England strategy ending in 2021, the organisation is looking ahead to its next strategy, which Tim said wouldn’t evolve hugely, but would see a change in how Sport England works.

“We now see CIMSPA as a critical part of the eco-system that supports sport and physical activity.”

– Tim Hollingsworth

Tim said, “I want us to work more in partnership and be more focused on outcomes than just outputs. At the moment we want to hear back from the system, recognising that it’s an ecosystem and that everyone is ultimately reliant on each other to survive and thrive. That’s why our current process feels more drawn out, because we want to listen, learn and co-create the direction of travel as much as possible, so that when we do come to make decisions, we do so in a way that makes sense.”

CIMSPA or REPs?

As an example of such collaboration, Tim announced the transfer of the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs) to the CIMSPA Exercise and Fitness Directory.

The result of months of hard work between CIMSPA and UK Coaching, this single directory for all exercise and fitness professionals creates a unified recognition system for people working in the sector and a single endorsement mechanism for training providers.

Commenting on the announcement Tim said, “From a Sport England point of view, this is something we wanted to happen but we didn’t want to say how. All credit to UK Coaching and CIMSPA for this classic example of what collaboration can achieve. It really is a great step forward.”