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Spending review: Where the axe will fall on our sporting infrastructure Schools and children bear the brunt of 'devastating' cuts while London 2012 escapes censureIt was never going to be easy watching Conservative ministers make swingeing cuts to the national sporting infrastructure. For those who since 1997 have worked to greatly improve the shattered landscape the Tories left last time round, today was bitter.Sue Campbell, the chair of the Youth Sport Trust, described as "devastating" the £160m cut to the schools PE and sport budget. That abolishes 450 School Sport Partnerships, which have worked to hugely increase pupils' sports opportunities and provide links between schools and with clubs.Specialist schools were also done away with, and the extra funding they receive, £129 per pupil per year, still relatively modest, will be dispersed into the general school budget. Michael Gove, the education minister, argued this is not a cut, but that individual schools will receive their budgets directly, to spend as they wish, though there is no guarantee any will be spent on sport and the central network to oversee sports development has been dismantled.Steve Gates, the director of sports specialism at Bradford's Tong High School said: "That £129 stretches to major provision of PE for our pupils, and to our acting as a 'hub' for primary and secondary schools in our area, serving some of the country's most deprived children. The results, and use of sport to help children improve their overall attainment, have been remarkable."It takes a long time to build up a successful operation, with the relationships we have and systems which work well, but it takes very little time to destroy. There is now a real risk of it all collapsing."Of the 26% â £5.5bn â cut to the budgets of local authorities, which fund and staff the sports facilities on which the majority of people rely, Simon Henig, the leader of Durham county council, said: "This is approaching the worst case scenario we were planning for."Sport, still, is not a service which local authorities are legally required to provide â a policy failing of the last Labour government, whose general record on sport was applauded even by the Conservatives. Councils casting around for areas to make these cuts will therefore, according to Henig, inevitably land on leisure centres, swimming pools, playing fields and the staff who run, manage, clean and service them."We have 17 leisure centres now," Henig said, "and sadly it is highly unlikely we will have 17 in 2015. It is also highly likely that the improvements we have been able to make in providing sport will now be dismantled. In Westminster I often worry all this seems like just numbers, amounts of money which can be cut, but we will see the effect it will have on people's lives and health, at a time when our major health challenge is obesity."George Osborne, right, the chancellor, today repeatedly blamed the budget deficit Labour bequeathed, and "irresponsible Labour spending", for the decisions to cut public services. However, none of this spending, on school and community sport, was criticised by the Conservatives in opposition. Just before the election, Hugh Robertson, then the shadow and now the sports minister, told the Guardian he "applauded" Labour's investment in sport and pledged it would not be undermined by the Conservatives in government. Once in office, however, coalition ministers have been terrified by the assertions Osborne has led that the economy is in such crisis, facing meltdown in the markets, that the deficit had to be dealt with rapidly. It was, then, a political choice to deal with it as the government is: 78% via the £83bn cuts Osborne announced yesterday, just 22% of it in tax increases.That choice, and the inequalities resulting from it, are illustrated starkly by sport. At the same time as local authorities and schools were faced with sweeping cuts to organisations of mostly poorly paid people doing the worthy work of improving sports provision, Wayne Rooney and his agent are manoeuvring for his next contract to pay more than £200,000 per week.Robertson himself was relieved yesterday, having fought a successful battle to maintain the funding, small compared with education and local government, specific to his Department for Culture Media and Sport. The cuts of 30% to Sport England, which funds coaching and facilities programmes, and UK Sport, which supports elite athletes' living expenses and training programmes, look large, but will be compensated by an increase in the lottery money flowing to sport."To deal with an unprecedented financial deficit we have been forced to make some incredibly difficult decisions," Robertson said today. "But in the current economic climate, this is a good settlement for DCMS's sectors."The budget to host the Olympics in 2012, all £9.3bn of it, is completely protected, to ensure a good show when, Robertson said, "The eyes of the whole world will be upon us."That finally, comprehensively, buried the promise which won London the 2012 Olympics, that a Games here would, according to Sebastian Coe and the then prime minister Tony Blair, "inspire a new generation to take up sport".It was always a claim which should never have been made, because building huge venues, which in London still mostly have no sustainable afterlife, for two weeks of sport by elite athletes, was never going to suddenly make ordinary, sedentary mortals realise the joys of getting fitter.The Labour government, though, was separately committed to sport, and, as the shadow minister for culture, media and sport, Ivan Lewis, said ruefully today: "We accept we made mistakes in government, but we did a lot of good, and investment in sport, at school and in the community, was one of them."Gove, in a letter informing the Youth Sport Trust the government will no longer require its services, acknowledged the huge benefits of the £2.4bn investment into school sport since 2003. The number of children participating in school sport for two hours a week crumbled to under 25% when the Conservative government last ran down the sporting infrastructure. Labour's efforts and investment increased that proportion to over 90%.Robertson himself admitted today that the services on which the pledge to increase sports participation depends, in education, health and local government, "are outside of our control in the DCMS". He declined to say whether this government will now revise down the pledge to get two million more people physically active by 2012, but whether he does or not, it is impossible to believe it will be met.This, five months into the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, is its statement of commitment to sport. Improving the national opportunities to be more physically active, as Coe promised, is expensive and difficult, and some carefully constructed networks will be demolished. But the £9.3bn Olympics themselves, those few days in 2012, must remain lavish, because then, "the eyes of the whole world will be upon us".Spending review 2010Tax and spendingDavid Connguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |