Parkour UK​ welcomes the DCMS announcement by The Minister for Sport, Tracey Crouch of a consultation on sport in the UK #SportingFuture

Parkour UK​ welcomes the Department for Culture, Media & Sport announcement by The Minister for Sport, Tracey Crouch of a consultation on sport in the UK 

Tracey Crouch, said:

“The Government believes that sport is fundamentally a powerful and positive thing. It is now time to turn that belief into something tangible, to turn the dream of a truly active nation into a reality. This consultation document asks some broad questions about how we might achieve this, looking at how we can maximise the value we all know sport can bring, but without giving up what we’ve already got. In the future, this will mean some different decisions being made than would be made today. But they will be better decisions, because they will start to take into account more than simple numbers, they will recognise – and maximise – the extraordinary value of sport”

Commenting on the announcement, Eugene Minogue, Parkour UK CEO, said:

“Following our recent visit to the DCMS to #GiveParkourAGo with Tracey Crouch, the Minister for Sport, we welcome today’s announcement of a consultation on designing a new sport strategy for England. Parkour UK and the Parkour/Freerunning community believe they are extremely well positioned to positively inform the consultation and contribute to the development of new ways of thinking.

We’re particularly pleased that government has chosen to include ‘new sports’ as part of the participation theme; and also that ‘Good Governance’ has been referenced as part of the ‘Coaching, Workforce & Good Governance’ theme. Our current work on being in the final stage of achieving Sports Council recognition as a ‘new sport’, puts the community and us as an NGB at the forefront of this work. As always, we are committed to share our experience with other emerging sports/activities in becoming established and developing the necessary good governance structures. Our recent work to recruit two new Independent Directors, a new Company Secretary and implement significant changes to our Memorandum and Articles demonstrates just that. Parkour UK now have in place a balanced, skill-based board that includes practitioners, two under the age of 25, alongside a modern, independent, term-limited model that is widely acknowledged as best practice, with embedded openness and transparency. 

We believe the Parkour UK community are well positioned to contributing views and opinions across all ten of the identified themes, and fully support the commitment to create an active, healthy and cohesive nation through sport/physical activity. Particular areas of significant contribution are the ‘Participation’ theme – particularly Women & Girls, the ‘Physical Activity’ theme – particularly Mental Health & Older People. As well as the ‘Children & Young People’ theme – basic physical literacy through early years and into primary schools. We have also been positively working with the Department for Education to add Parkour/Freerunning to the list of activities which can be assessed as part of GCSE PE and A–level PE. Discussions are ongoing and we will be submitting evidence to them later in the year”

#GiveParkourAGo #SportingFuture

The public consultation will run for just under nine weeks, until Friday October 2. It marks the start of the government working on a new strategy for sport in this country.