Sport England

We're an arms-length body of government responsible for growing and developing grassroots sport and getting more people active across England.

We started out as The Sports Council, an independent body under the Department of National Heritage, that was established by Royal Charter in 1972.

In 1996 an amended Royal Charter established The English Sports Council, which came into being on 1 January 1997 as The Sports Council was reorganised into UK Sport and the home nations sports councils – we were then rebranded as Sport England in 1999.

We’re working to keep movement, sport and physical activity central to the lives of everyone through a combination of National Lottery funding and grant-in-aid from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which classifies us as a non-departmental government body. Around two-thirds of our funding comes from lottery players.

In 2018-19, we invested £260 million of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into projects and programmes that support people to be physically active, with 1,575 individual awards ranging from £300 to £18 million.