A new Active Sports Partnership: Lancashire Sport

County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) were introduced by Sport England in 2000, to try to address the perennial problem of fragmentation in delivering sporting opportunities – between schools, clubs and their national governing bodies of sport (NGBs), and local authorities. Such fragmentation was particularly prevalent in large counties like Lancashire with two-tier local government, and numerous NGBs all operating their own approaches. It was the intention of CSPs to combine the efforts of all providers under a single umbrella (Sport England, 2001: 1), following the prevailing ethos of ‘joined-up provision for joined problems’, and they were defined as partnerships of ‘key agencies and providers committed to establishing a sustainable infrastructure to provide a single system for all young people to benefit from sport and physical activity’ (CSPN, 2003).