Sport Unlimited

What is Sport Unlimited?

Sport Unlimited is a nationwide initiative aiming to get more children and young people taking part in sport and physical activity outside of school. Launched in 2008 by Sport England, some £36 million is being invested to get 900,000 11-19 year old 'semi-sporty' young people playing more sport.

The Sport England initiative is co-ordinated across England by the 49 County Sports Partnerships (CSPs). This means that in Cheshire and Warrington, we co-ordinate and manage the scheme on behalf of Sport England, cascading funding to a whole range of partners into local communities. This includes not only our three local authority sport departments but also the School Sports Partnerships, community/voluntary sports clubs, leisure centre's and private coaching companies and private leisure providers.

The scheme, so far, has been a great success. There has been a year-on-year increase nationally in the number of young people participating in high quality new sporting opportunities. We've not been left out of the action, as some 11,660 young people have taken part on activities since the start of the scheme, with nearly 9,000 of these staying to complete the 8-10 week programme (retention figures are an important measure of success). In fact, we've just been placed 9th out of 49 CSPs by Sport England for our year 2 results. We're pretty pleased with this result. So too are our partners as we've worked together to bring in an additional £178,200(2009-10) of investment, investment that has benefited 9,377 kids in 32 different sports.

The scheme has now entered its third (and possibly final) year, which runs April 2010 to March 2011. We are again supporting a wide range of projects (over 100 at the last count) with activities include not only in the traditional sports (such as football, cricket, rugby, rowing and basketball) but also a number of alternative sports which include baseball, skateboarding and ten-pin bowling.

We still have small sums of funding unallocated for year three. If you'd therefore like to find out more about Sport Unlimited in Cheshire & Warrington (and how you can access this funding) please contact Rebecca Bryning, Administrative Officer, rebecca.bryning@cwsportspartnership.org or call 01606 871812.

North West National results

To view the press release issued by Sport England please click here

Sport Unlimited Photographs

Please click here to view photographs of Sport Unlimited programmes