ACTION NEEDED!! UK Sport Consultation

Below is a message from  Lee Dolby, Director of Development, UK Deaf Sport:

You may be aware that currently the UK Government does not recognise deaf sport in the same way that it does Paralympics Sport. This has meant that since lottery funding began £174,944,971 has been invested into Paralympics, but only £209,620 in Deaflympics in other words just 0.11%. Paralympics’ funding has increase by 707% since Sydney from £10,075,602 to £71,247,756 despite this the amount of medals won reducing in number (Sydney 131, Athens 94 (down 28%) Beijing 102 (down 22%) London 120 (down 9% on Sydney)

This distribution of funds is driven by UK Sports “No Compromise” funding policy. A policy that currently does not support deaf athletes on a deaf pathway. UK Sport now have a public consultation process open to review this approach and we need as many people and organisations as possible to respond to the consultation to highlight the need for Deaf athletes on a deaf pathway to be recognised and supported in the same was as there Paralympics counterpart so that they too can continue to achieve great success on a world stage.


To help people understand the current situation we have created some supporting information on our website and also shared our draft response to the consultation. Please have a look at these and then most importantly ACT NOW to provide your feedback directly to UK Sport so that they can understand the strength of the feeling across the deaf and sporting community to this massive imbalance in funding. All the information can be found on the link below.

http://www.ukdeafsport.org.uk/news.php?action=view&news_id=331

Thank you to all those that go on to make a response. Hopefully if we join together to make our voice heard we can improve the situation for future generations of deaf and hard of hearing people that access, enjoy and go on to excel in sport

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Lee - leed@ukds.org.uk.

The deadline for responses is December 10th so don’t delay, have your say.