£27m Boost for Local Clubs

The National Sports Foundation announced yesterday by Gordon Brown is likely to act as a new coordinating body drawing together public-private funding of grassroots sport.

The NSF, the latest addition to the array of funding streams flowing through British sport, will receive an initial £27m of public funding channelled through the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

It also served to underline the government's professed commitment to sport in the final months of London's bid for the 2012 Olympics. Sport has already benefited this year, emerging as a conspicuous winner in the DCMS spending review earlier this year.

The final shape of the NSF will be determined by the findings of Sir Patrick Carter's review of sports funding, commissioned by Mr Brown last year.

Sir Patrick, a close ally of Mr Brown's, has previously stepped in to devise a solution to the Wembley stadium fiasco, and is expected to recommend that the NSF acts as a centralised body for public-private funding of sport.

Currently individual sports run foundations channel money for the provision of facilities at grassroots level, the most notable of which is the Football Foundation.