Recent News
GBWBA welcomes funding news from UK Sport
26th March 2010
UK Sport has today taken a major step to secure a more certain environment for Olympic and Paralympic sports in the current economic climate, with the combination of vital new investment from the Team 2012 initiative and adjustments to funding awards allowing for the mission to London to be kept firmly on track.
As part of the new investments the GB women's wheelchair basketball team will see an increase in the amount of the World Class Performance Programme this adjustment represents a significant addition to the basic funding amount previously available to the sport.
Charlie Bethel, Chief Executive of GBWBA, said, “It is fantastic news that UK Sport have increased the funding for the women’s wheelchair basketball programme it allows the squad to undertake the full training and competition programme produced by the WCP staff for 2009/2011 period. The additional funding will allow a full programme to be planned and undertaken for the GB Women's team up to and beyond the 2012 London Paralympic Games so we can prepare and perform to our best abilities in London 2012.”
The high performance sports’ body announced revised investment figures for all funded sports following a thorough Annual Review process. Initially, £6.5 million of new funds have been made available to UK Sport from the successful Team 2012 sponsorship scheme, which announced Visa as its Presenting Partner in September.
In addition, UK Sport has reacted to changed economic conditions by adjusting the inflation level in all previously-made awards to 1.5%,making a further £6.5 million available. This has enabled UK Sport to support women’s boxing following the recent IOC announcement of its inclusion in the Olympics, allow for the recent inclusion of Intellectual Disability competition into the Paralympics and also offer increased funding to sports which had previously only received ‘basic’ level support. The result is that, at a time when many competitor nations are struggling to secure resources,
Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic sports are now well placed to maximise their potential for success at 2012. It comes after a successful year where the vast majority of sports have shown real progress on the journey to the Games, with 43 medals won at World and European level in Olympic disciplines and 149 in Paralympic.
John Steele, Chief Executive of UK Sport, said: “These decisions are vital to our overall mission through to London, and represent what we believe to be the best use of the resources available from a performance perspective. While future funding can never be guaranteed, especially in such a difficult economic climate, they help to draw a ‘line in the sand’ around issues of funding and give sports a clear line of sight through to 2012.
“Over the past year it has become clear to UK Sport that key decisions relating to 2012, such as selection criteria and competition schedules, could not wait until the proposed confirmation at the ‘mid cycle review’ in Autumn 2010. So decisions have been brought forward now that maximise stability without impacting on our medal targets, and we can move into 2010 without the burden of a major mid-cycle review. As always there can be arguments about how the cake is cut, but I am very confident we have done the best by British sport at this time. Future income will be allocated using our investment criteria, including that raised by Team 2012 and we remain hugely grateful to Visa for their support of the scheme.
