By Clare Dunn, FCIMSPA (Chartered), CMgr, CIMSPA Associate Director ‑ Business Engagement
For years, the sport and physical activity sector has spoken about its contribution to health, wellbeing, employability and economic growth. We know that a skilled workforce helps people live healthier lives, supports communities and contributes billions to the economy.
The challenge has never been proving our value – it’s ensuring the organisations that shape local investment, education policy and workforce development recognise it – and the publication of England’s new generation of Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) marks a major shift in that direction.
For the first time, sport and physical activity is not simply being viewed as a leisure service or a standalone sector. Increasingly, it is being recognised as a contributor to wider priorities including health improvement, economic growth, productivity, youth employment, prevention and workforce participation.
That change has not happened by accident – it is the result of a strategic and sustained investment by Sport England and extensive work led by CIMSPA through the Local Skills Project and the development of Local Skills Accountability Boards (LSABs).
What are Local Skills Improvement Plans?
LSIPs are the Government’s primary mechanism for identifying local workforce needs and aligning education and skills provision with employer demand.
Covering every area of England, they bring together employers, education providers, local authorities, Chambers of Commerce, Jobcentre Plus and strategic authorities to answer three critical questions:
- Where are employers struggling to recruit?
- What skills shortages are limiting economic growth?
- How should training and education provision respond?
Importantly, LSIPs are no longer simply diagnostic documents. The latest generation moves beyond identifying problems and into delivery, influencing decisions around:
- Adult Skills Fund investment
- Apprenticeship priorities
- Skills bootcamps
- Employability programmes
- Youth Guarantee activity
- Local labour market planning
- Economic inactivity initiatives
In simple terms, LSIPs increasingly shape where skills investment is directed and which sectors are prioritised. For employers across sport and physical activity, that matters.
The sector’s position has fundamentally changed
When the original LSIPs were published in 2022 and 2023, sport and physical activity had almost no visibility within the system.
The sector was directly recognised in only 2 areas and had limited influence on local workforce planning. Today, the picture looks very different.
Sport and physical activity is now directly referenced in 15 LSIPs, recognising the sector’s contribution through health, prevention, employability, wellbeing and community development priorities.
More importantly, the sector now has established relationships with:
- Employer representative bodies
- Chambers of commerce
- Combined authorities
- Strategic authorities
- Local authorities
- Integrated care systems
- Colleges and universities
- Skills England stakeholders
This means sport and physical activity has moved from being an observer in local skills discussions to becoming an active participant in shaping them.
How did we get here?
Three years ago, Sport England made a strategic investment in CIMSPA’s Local Skills Project.
While initially viewed as a workforce development programme, it has evolved into something much more significant: a national infrastructure connecting sport and physical activity to England’s skills, employment, education, health and economic development systems.
Through this investment, CIMSPA has:
- Established Local Skills Accountability Boards across England
- Engaged hundreds of employers and partners
- Completed more than 900 workforce diagnostics
- Developed local workforce intelligence and planning capability
- Published and supported local skills plans
- Created direct links between employers, education providers and local decision makers
At the heart of this work sits the LSAB network. These boards bring together employers, colleges, universities, active partnerships, local authorities, health systems and employment services to identify workforce priorities and coordinate action.
For many areas, it is the first time these organisations have worked together around a shared workforce agenda for sport and physical activity.
The result is a sector that now understands its local workforce needs better than ever before and has the partnerships required to influence change.
Why this matters for Sport England’s future strategy
The timing could not be more important. Sport England’s emerging strategic direction places considerable emphasis on place-based working, tackling inequalities, workforce development, health improvement and stronger local decision making.
At the same time, government policy continues to move towards devolution. Increasingly, decisions about skills, employability and economic development are being made locally through combined authorities and strategic authorities rather than nationally.
For Sport England, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. If sport and physical activity is not represented within local decision-making structures, there is a risk that investment and policy decisions are made without recognising the sector’s contribution.
The Local Skills Project addresses exactly this challenge. The relationships, governance structures and intelligence developed through LSABs provide a practical mechanism for embedding sport and physical activity within emerging devolved systems.
In many respects, the Local Skills infrastructure already represents the type of place-based collaboration that devolution is seeking to achieve.
So what does this mean for employers?
This is arguably the most important question. For employers, LSIPs are not simply policy documents. They create opportunities to influence how local education, skills and employability systems respond to workforce needs.
This means employers can help shape:
- Local training provision
- New qualifications and learning pathways
- Apprenticeship opportunities
- Employability programmes
- Recruitment initiatives
- Workforce investment priorities
In practical terms, it means local skills systems are becoming more responsive to the challenges employers have been raising for years around recruitment, retention and workforce capability.
Through CIMSPA’s Local Skills infrastructure, employers now have a collective voice within these discussions.
What does it mean for HR and workforce leaders?
For HR professionals and workforce leads, the benefits are equally significant.
The sector now has access to local workforce intelligence that can help organisations:
- Understand recruitment challenges
- Benchmark workforce trends
- Identify future skills needs
- Build stronger talent pipelines
- Connect with local education providers
- Access funded workforce development opportunities
As devolved skills investment increases, organisations that engage with local skills systems are likely to be better positioned to access support and influence investment decisions.
What does it mean for the wider sector?
Perhaps the biggest shift is one of perception. Historically, sport and physical activity often had to argue for recognition.
Today, the sector is increasingly being recognised as part of the solution to some of the country’s biggest challenges:
- Economic inactivity
- Health inequalities
- Youth unemployment
- Workforce productivity
- Prevention and public health
- Community resilience
That creates a different conversation. Rather than asking why investment should come into sport and physical activity, we can increasingly demonstrate how investment in our workforce helps deliver wider economic, health and social outcomes.
The next chapter
The publication of the new LSIPs is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning of the next phase. The real opportunity now lies in turning recognition into action.
That means continuing to strengthen Local Skills Accountability Boards, expanding employer engagement, influencing devolved funding decisions and ensuring local workforce plans translate into measurable outcomes.
Most importantly, it means ensuring sport and physical activity remains firmly embedded within the systems that shape skills, employment, health and economic growth.
Thanks to Sport England’s investment and the collective efforts of employers, Active Partnerships, education providers and local partners, the foundations are now in place.
The sector has moved from the margins of local skills policy into the mainstream of regional workforce planning.
The opportunity now is to make the most of it.