So Jeremy Hunt the SoS for DCMS has gone further than feared today and announced that Sport England and UKSport will now ‘merge’ in plans set out in Parliament today.
When I was writing our manifesto on sport we looked at merger. At a very simple level it looks attractive. But like so much of life it isn’t quite that easy.
We therefore proposed much closer cooperation and working with reduced back office costs and relocation of services out of London. But we stopped short of merger for 2 simple reasons. First the case was not made for an all under one roof miracle for sport. I will explain more at some later stage. Second we didn’t want to distract the work of UKSport in delivering a record medal haul in 2012. UKSport has delivered and needs the same no compromise approach to winning in 2012.
