About Us

The concept of a County Sports Partnership (or CSP) can be attributed to Sport England, who created the term to describe local networks of: local authorities, national governing bodies of sport, sport clubs, education providers (schools, FE and HE), health organisations including Primary Care Trusts as well as other local agencies committed to working together to drive improved access to, and an increased participation in, sport and physical activity. The aim is to bring together all key partners involved in the sector at a local level and to strategically advocate for sustained investment in sport.

There are 49 County Sports Partnerships covering England. To find out more about the national County Sports Partnership network, click here. The Cheshire & Warrington Sports Partnership does not have any formal structure. Nor does it have a membership. So in effect it is an evolving and ever-changing local network driven by need, opportunity and benefit. This section of the website aims to give you aflavour of the wide partnership of different agencies committed to providing a high quality single system to help people to access and benefit from sport across Cheshire & Warrington.

Each County Sports Partnership is led by a central team of people whose job it is to provide leadership and co-ordination of the network. For Cheshire and Warrington CSP, this work is undertaken by 'Sport Cheshire', an independent charitableorganisation, who is funded (in part) by Sport England to primarily support Governing Bodies of Sport. This support includes linking them to other local community sport and physical activity providers (e.g. schools, colleges and universities, facility operators, the business community, health  organisations, community sport groups, amongst others).

The key thing to remember is that the purpose of a partnership approach is that organisations can choose to come together when there is mutual benefit to do so. As Sport Cheshire has successfully secured national investment to coordinate the delivery of the School Games, Sportivate and Sport Makers elements of the People Places Play legacy plan, much of this activity will be achieved through a partnership approach. They are directly responsible, for example, for commissioning and funding activities (eg Sportivate), with many local organisations directly benefiting from this national funding stream.  Likewise, they provide a number of supporting services (everything from coach education to ClubMark accreditation), all of which aims to strengthen and improve our sporting infrastructure. To find out more about Sport Cheshire, click here.