At November 30th 2003, Sport England had a surplus balance of £210m. By the end of 2007, the figure was still the same.
Yet Sport England has failed to answer the vital question: Why, in the same time that (after government pressure) other Lottery distributors reduced their balances by £1.2 billion, have Sport England kept theirs static?
When the question was posed by Matt Scott in The Guardian today, Sport England replied that ‘we have committed all our cash balances.’
The reality is that though contractual commitments are often made months in advance of when the money is paid out, Sport England is well capable of managing the amount of money that is distributed each month. For the past four years Sport England has only made commitments to pay out exactly the same amount of money each month that they expect to receive from ticket sales. As a result the surplus remains untouched.
In contrast, other distributors made commitments each month to spend some of the money from their surplus as well as the money they expected to receive from ticket sales.
In the past four years, Sport England has shown no intention of distributing their cash reserve. CAARE wants to know why and the grassroots sports groups, the good causes to whom the Lottery money is intended to be distributed, deserve an answer.
