£10m on hold as tennis fails to expand

Sport England yesterday announced the 2013-17 funding levels for all sports but the Lawn Tennis Association’s four-year plan for increasing the numbers of people playing has been declared “not strong enough” and £10.3m of its £17.4m total has been put on hold.

Swimming and basketball will also have chunks of funding withheld for 2014-17, both sports have brand-new participation plans and they need to prove these are working.

Other sports such as cycling, netball, triathlon and wheelchair basketball have all enjoyed funding rises of more than 30 per cent.

For tennis, the overall funding will go down from £24.5m to £17.4mi and the LTA will have to produce a convincing new, improved plan for how they will spend the 2014-17 money, otherwise it will be distributed in other ways such as directly to clubs.

Sport England chief executive Jennie Price said: “Tennis has not performed well in terms of participation and is broadly flat though it got a bit of bounce in the latest figures.

“Their plan simply wasn’t strong enough to justify the four-year investment.”

Some 31 of the 46 sports are getting increases including cycling £32m (up from £24.7m), netball £25.3m (£18.7m), triathlon £7.5m (£4.7m) and wheelchair basketball £2m (£700,000).