Summary
Scotland is a sporting nation culturally but not when it comes to funding it.
By Grant Jarvie University of Edinburgh
Councils are spending less on sport, culture and leisure services according to the 2025 report from the audit commission. Such decisions impact upon not just health outcomes but other outcomes.
Scotland’s councils play a vital role in supporting communities by delivering a wide range of sport, culture and leisure services. These services aim to keep communities healthy and connected, improving residents’ quality of life. The level of services offered, and how they are provided, is a decision for individual councils.
Whilst councils are spending more on services overall, spending on culture and leisure services according to the report reduced by three per cent in real terms in the five years from 2018/19.
Other reports talk about a 20% cut in local government investment in culture, sport and leisure services and as high as 33% in some local authorities.
At the same time income from charges increased by 27 per cent, whilst overall satisfaction and attendance rates for some services remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Removing these important services risks increasing inequalities and exclusion, with rural and more deprived communities having a greater reliance on these facilities.
Failure to adequately consult with communities and assess the equalities impacts of service changes has led to some councils reversing decisions and communities taking legal action.
We have many strategies but less progress on national outcomes. Sport and culture should not be cut but have increased funding to help deliver outcomes.
The Audit Commission reports drastic cuts to sport and culture services. Once statutory provision is provided for the other things are disproportionately hit because they are not statutory.
All local authorities are required to do is provide “adequate provision. This is a real problem.
What adequate provision means is left to the choice of each of the 32 local authorities to decide upon.
Once the core things that local authorities have to provide are considered schools, housing, transport etc, that is to say the statutory provision, the money that is left to spend on other things is not a lot. These other things like sport, leisure and culture are disproportionately hit because they are not statutory.
These cuts are year on year cuts, so they are accumulative year on year cuts – one local authority has to cut its services by £15 million this year on top of £10 million last year.
Local authorities are forced to make choices they should not have to make if we valued sport and culture.
We are beyond a tipping point on efficiencies. We are beyond a tipping point on the evidence of the added value that sport and culture make to health, education, Scottish influence abroad.
Local authorities have to make choices, but governments of all colours also make choices and, in this case, the wrong ones.
Scotland does not fully grasp the added value that these activities bring.
When you close a library you not only affect reading rates, but you take away a facility where many people go for warmth in the winter and that affects health.
The relationship between forms of physical activity, physical inactivity and health has been covered extensively.
When the devolved Welsh Government directly funds sport, arts and music within is Global Wales plan it knows it is helping Wales get closer to the countries it wants to get closer to.
It is not good enough to say a little bit of the health budget goes into sport and physical activity but what about the other budgets – We should cross-subsidise sport from other budgets – Scotland chooses not to do this.
We are a sporting nation culturally but not when it comes to funding it.
Providing funding for pitches, girls and women’s football, choosing not to close swimming programmes or pools , maintaining free access to arts and museums, not closing libraries, having a sporstaid fund to help Scotland get closer to other countries all of these are investments in Scotland’s social and cultural infrastructure, preventative spend, added value for money and those with the least disposable income are served better.
