Grassroots Sports: Facilities for Girls
Thursday, 12 November 2026
Contributions
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)Conservative
3. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of facilities for girls’ grassroots sports.
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lisa Nandy)Labour
This Government are more committed than ever to championing women’s sport and inspiring girls to get involved. One of the great pleasures I have had in recent years is being presented with the challenge of a whole generation of girls coming forward to play sports such as football and rugby, inspired by the stunning success of the Lionesses and the Red Roses. That is why we have removed many of the restrictions on what grassroots facilities we are prepared to fund. The one restriction we have put in place is that women and girls must have equal access to priority slots when we invest in grassroots sports facilities. I would be delighted to discuss with the hon. Member what more we can do.
At Westminster Park in my constituency, girls want to play football and cricket, but there is nowhere suitable for them to change. For the Leopards, Westminster Park’s girls football team, that becomes a real barrier as the girls get older and move up to the adult pitches. Councillor Razia Daniels and I have been campaigning with local residents to get better facilities, and the council has commissioned a feasibility study, but it has no capital budget for this, and without proper funding the girls risk another season without being able to play. I would like to take up the Secretary of State’s offer, so will she meet me to discuss how we can work with the Department to ensure that the council, the Football Foundation and Sport England secure the funding so that no more girls miss out?
I would be very happy to ensure that officials follow up with the hon. Member to resolve that issue. She is right to point to changing facilities as one of the key reasons why girls do not stay involved in sport. We really have pushed hard to ensure that this is a priority for funding from the Football Foundation and others. A number of Members across the House have raised with me as Culture Secretary over the past couple of years the significant challenge of navigating these funding systems and the conditions attached to them. We are looking at how to make it much easier for councils and Members of Parliament to access that funding to solve the local problems that she describes, but I would be very happy to follow this up.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney) (Lab)Labour
Will the Secretary of State please join me in thanking the volunteers at Junior Parkrun at Parc Bryn Bach in Tredegar. It has good facilities, but their hard work has doubled the number of girls and boys getting out to run on a Sunday morning. Having said that, research from Sky shows that girls in my constituency still do an hour and 16 minutes less sport each week than boys. Can she give us the wider picture of the steps that she is taking to close that gap and get more girls to be active?
I thank my hon. Friend for his advocacy for Parkrun, which has been one of the real bright spots on the sport landscape in recent years—I am a keen participant in my local Parkrun at Haigh Hall and across the borough. I take this opportunity to congratulate all the volunteers at Junior Parkrun, because without them these amazing events would not happen. He is right to point to the challenges we still have with women and girls’ participation. There is no single solution, but I can assure him that I and my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport are treating this as one of the top priorities in the Department.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5436629.