How we are structured

Sport England employee on the phone

Our Main Board is responsible for setting direction, providing an extra level of governance and giving our Executive Team support and advice.

Our Executive Team is responsible for the day-to-day running of the business.

We work out of 11 offices across the country - one central office in London, nine local offices and a shared service centre in Loughborough which responds to all our funding applications and queries.

The organisation is divided into eight directorates - each focused on a key group or partners or area of work. They are:

Children and Young People

Our Children and Young People directorate are responsible for the club and community part of the Government's 5 hour sport offer for children and young people. They lead on a number of programmes and work areas including Leadership and Volunteering, Club Links, Sport Unlimited and Recruit into coaching. The directorate also leads our partnerships with higher and further education.

The team's executive director is Mike Diaper.

Find out more about work with children and young people

Find out more about higher and further education.

Commercial

The commercial directorate's role is to find and work with commercial partners to generate £50 million for community sport. The team works collaboratively and innovatively to ensure partners derive real benefit from their investment.

Our Partnership Charter explains how we work and the attributes we are looking for in potential partners in our Partnership Charter.

The team's executive director is Thomas Godfrey.

Download our Partnership Charter (pdf 26KB)

Communications and Public Affairs

Our communications and public affairs directorate is responsible for helping our partners and the public understand what we do and how they can work with us - whether they want funding, advice or information.

The team's executive director is Caroline Weber. 

Download our logo and logo guidelines

See our latest press releases.
 

Communities

The Communities directorate helps the national governing bodies deliver their plans at a local level. This is achieved through the brokering and day-to-day management of working relationships with local partners including county sports partnerships and local authorities.

The directorate has three centres of excellence - Building Schools for the Future, county sports partnerships and local government - and nine regional offices. Together they provide the link between national policy and local delivery.

The team's executive director is Judith Dean.

Find out more about our local offices

Find out more about Building Schools for the Future

Find out more about county sports partnerships

Find out more about our work with local government.

Facilities and planning

It is the role of the facilities and planning directorate to help create, support and maintain the buildings, facilities and spaces we need to play sport.

They provide expert advice on facility design, work with the planning system to generate more investment in sport and are statutory consultees if a potential new development threatens community playing fields. They maintain the Active Places database - a comprehensive map of sports facilities throughout England that helps local authorities plan their facility investment more strategically.

They also work with the governing bodies we fund and major asset owners to provide an overall view of facilities across the country. We work to ensure they meet the needs of the users, and provide a sustainable investment for the owners and operators.

The team also manages our national sport centres, including Bisham Abbey and Lilleshall. These centres provide national and international standard training and competition in a range of priority sports.

Finally, the team is working closely with Locog and the Olympic Development Agency to manage our investment in the Aquatic Centre, the VeloPark and the canoing centre in Broxbourne to ensure these facilities are suitable for community use after the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The team's executive director is Charles Johnston.

Read more about our investment in London 2012 venues

Find out more about our national sport centres

Download our design guidance notes

Find out more about our facilities and planning services.

Finance and Corporate Services

Our finance and corporate services directorate is responsible for all our back-office functions including finance, ICT and legal services. They ensure the organisation has the systems, processes and technology it needs to operate smoothly.

Our Interim Director of Finance is Robert Kendall.

NGB and Sport

Our NGB and Sport directorate's job is to help sport's national governing bodies achieve their participation, satisfaction and talent development targets.

Relationship managers work closely with the governing bodies to ensure our £480 million investment in them delivers a good return. While our experts in areas such as  equality and diversity, coaching, and volunteering help them tackle specific issues.

The directorate funds national partners, such as Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, Sports coach UK and Streetgames to deliver specific services that underpin the the work of the governing bodies.

It helps to run Playground to Podium, a programme that identifies and supports potential Paralympians.

Finally, it oversees two of our funding programmes - the Innovation Fund and Themed Rounds. And it is responsible for working with the other sports councils to recognise sports and national governing bodies that are then eligible for Lottery funding.

The directorate is run by our two executive directors of sport Lisa O'Keefe and Phil Smith.

Find out more about how and why we fund NGBs

See which sports and governing bodies we recognise.

Research and Strategy

Our research directorate provides the evidence community sport needs to make the case for sport, monitor our progress against our target and learn about what works and why.  Our Active People Survey measure participation amongst adults, whilst the satisfaction survey analyses how happy people who play sport are with their sporting experience.

We don't just generate statistics, however, we use this data to help us understand what motivate people to play sport - and what puts them off.

The executive director for research and strategy is Mihir Warty. 
 
View the latest Active People Survey results

See how satisfied people are with the sports they play

Find out more about what motivates people to play sport

Get an overview of all the research tools we have available.

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