Tim Hollingsworth leaves role as chief executive

The video starts with Sport England's outgoing chief executive Tim Hollingsworth sitting across from interviewer Amy Burrows in a relaxed, high-backed chair in one of the organisation's bright and airy offices.

There's a table in front of them with glasses of water and large potted plants to the side, and Amy begins the interview.

Amy: Tim, it's lovely to have you here with us as your chapter with Sport England draws to a close. And firstly, I think if we just talk about some of the challenges that you faced during your time?

So, when you took on the role, I know Sport England's chair noticed that you faced a disengaged sector. So how have you worked to re-engage those partners nationwide and the local communities empowering them? What did you do to take steps around that?

Tim: Well, it feels, first of all, like it was in a different era, 2018 to where we are now in 2025. But it was the case, I think, that for very, you know, good reasons, many organisations across the sport sector felt disengaged from each other. They had perhaps been encouraged to be overly thoughtful about their own work and not really about how they work with others.

And we as an organisation hadn't perhaps put as much focus as we needed to on how we connect organisations across sport and physical activity from our point of view. So my job, I think, coming in, was to address that. One of the reasons why I wanted the job was the opportunity to think about the relational side of being the Sports Council.

We are an investor, we provide money, we provide resource. But we also, I think, provide context and we provide the opportunity to bring people together. And I certainly saw that as being really necessary if we were going to do what I know we really needed to do, which was to get the nation moving. So part of it for me coming in was recognising that there was a genuine need to engage our partners, to find common ground and common intent, ultimately to find a common narrative for how we're going to work together and then do that in a way that then lent itself to our subsequent investment and work.

Amy: Making those connections has been a really huge part of your time here, and actually, I imagine none more so than when you moved into that time of the pandemic. So Covid-19, we can't not talk about that when we discuss challenges. Obviously, there were unprecedented challenges to grassroots sport and to physical activity. So, what were the most significant hurdles that Sport England faced in supporting the sector during that particular period of time?

And what do you consider to be the most crucial lessons that were learned from that experience?

Tim: Well, for better or for worse, I've spent quite a lot of time reflecting on Covid, because it so defines the period that I've had as chief executive at Sport England. And I think when you go back to that time, we’ve got to remember two things. One, the utter uncertainty of it all and the jeopardy that organisations faced, as well as the human and personal cost of the pandemic; but secondly, also the way in which it made us think differently.

And I've got some lessons learned from that. I mean, I'm fiercely proud, actually, by the way of how we as an organisation, and indeed we as a sector responded to the pandemic. It was agile, it was flexible. It focused on what mattered most, which is survival in the first instance, and then trying to learn the lessons of the pandemic as we built back.

And whether it was thinking about small organisations and the way we supported them - I mean, my organisation, my colleagues mobilised incredibly to get millions of pounds out of the door in a matter of weeks to help small clubs and community groups across the country. We supported our existing partnerships and existing partners by fundamentally just saying "be flexible, stay alive, stay afloat. We'll come back to you with the work we want to do when this is done. In the meantime, let's work together on how we help you help your sport to survive".

We worked really, really hard from a standing stop to think about ways in which we could support professional sport. The government asked us to run a loan programme. We had up to 250 million pounds worth of loans going into professional rugby, football, basketball, netball.

So many of the sports where, fundamentally, they were reliant on people coming to watch for their income and that ceased overnight. We did a huge amount of work very quickly as well to understand how we could best help the leisure sector and particularly in public leisure and thinking about ways that money could be got out to public leisure as quickly as possible as well from government to help them.

And then we thought about, well, what can we do to help the nation move? So that led to a campaign, ‘Join The Movement’, that in a matter of weeks was up and running to get people to think about when they had that chance, either in the home or in that sacred hour that we all had to exercise during the pandemic, you know, how do you make sure you maximise it? And then ultimately, as we were starting to look at, well, when can we return?

The incredible work that my colleagues did between government and the sports to actually mediate that conversation and actually say, "when is it safe, how is it safe and how we can get people playing?" So we learned loads of things about what matters.

We learned loads of things about agility and flexibility, about relationships, about trust, about common purpose. I think also as a nation we learned that moving is fundamental to our health and wellbeing and we could perhaps come onto this, but it's one of my regrets for society rather than specifically for Sport England, that that moment in time when an hour a day was mandated in terms of exercise wasn't built on once we all started to return.

Amy: But we needed it. That was the thing, wasn't it? It was that key, crucial thing. And actually you talk about that agility, the flexibility, the reactivity, so many lessons from that whole experience that perhaps wouldn't have happened without Covid. So, although there were difficulties, there were also things and wins to be learned from that.

Tim: Massively so. It was a terrible time. It was a brutal time for many people. It was a tragic time. But if you want to take a step back from that and look at, well, how did an organisation like Sport England, how did a sector like community and grassroots sports and activity, both respond and then work together to come back, there was an enormous amount that we learned then about how we could do things well.

I hope and think we've learned and kept some of that in Sport England. I think we've lost some of it as well as we went back into the rhythm of less turbulent times, suddenly we found ourselves finding reasons not to do things again, whereas I think in the pandemic there was a lovely spirit of "What can we do?"

But I also think it was ways in which, you know, the the process of government, the process of making decisions, everyone was - we forget how unknown the circumstances were.

Amy: Yeah.

Tim: And now everyone's wise after the event and you know, looks back and says -

Amy: Yeah. Reflective.

Tim: We made some really bold calls. We made a decision in an afternoon, fundamentally, to make funding that was available to our partners, flexibly available for them over the next six months to enable them to survive. The sort of decision that would have taken weeks in normal time. So there's definitely things in the pandemic that I look back on fiercely proud of.

As I say, the Sport Survival Package, the loan scheme that we put in place from a standing start in to professional sport and the Community Emergency Fund, the Small Grants Fund that we put together in a matter of days to help community sport. Those are two things that came from nowhere to be really fundamental in such a short period of time.

Amy: So looking at some of those other lessons that have been learned, and I know that those deep-rooted inequalities is something that's very, very important to you. So I know that the Uniting the Movement strategy has placed a really strong emphasis on tackling those inequalities that we see in sport, we see in physical activity.

So, what have been the biggest barriers that you've encountered in trying to reach those underserved communities? And actually, what approaches have perhaps been most effective in reaching people, whether that's through gender, you know, affluence, differences in disability, ethnicity?

Tim: There's so much in that question, partly because, actually a point that we should remember, too, about the pandemic was that it made what were already some apparent and quite stubborn inequalities worse.

Amy: Absolutely.

Tim: You know, when it's easy to look back and say, well, we have that hour a day. But there were people, living in certain, you know, particularly in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation, for whom it was really difficult to do that hour or to find the opportunity to do it. Who were really struggling both either financially or with their physical or mental health.

Amy: Yeah.

Tim: And so we came out of the pandemic doubly determined to seek to use our money, public money, but also the sector’s power to make it more possible for them to feel that sport and physical activity could be for them and recognised that if we were going to be unashamedly disproportionate in our investment, it should be focused much more on those communities that need it most.

And that's where Uniting the Movement came from and it's a decade-long strategy for a reason, because it's systemic in how it tries to effect change. You will never move the dial in terms of sport and physical activity by simply doing transactional programmes. We've seen that. We've proved that that's actually the case because you can see moderate moments of success and then the funding ends or the programme ends or the partner goes and it stops.

Systemic work is the only way that we're going to move the dial. But that's a different way of working, it's a different way of investing. It's a different way of approaching problems. And coming out of the pandemic, I mean, Uniting the Movement was born from the inequality that was so apparent in that period and it was born from a deep-rooted belief that we could actually make a difference as a sector and we could make a difference to our investment and leadership as an organisation to the status quo.

And so when it says as a core purpose, we should as a nation move more, it fundamentally recognises what we had learned through that pandemic period and we sort of knew anyway - you go back through the decade of figures before and those inequalities exist. You're less likely to be active if you're a woman than a man, and we've already seen This Girl Can as a major campaigning intervention around that.

You're certainly less likely to be active if you're disabled. You're less likely to be active if you come from a Black or minority ethnic group in society. But the biggest barrier of all, the biggest driver of inequality is social economic circumstance. Where you live, what your bank balance is, where your postcode - what your postcode says is actually the biggest reason for inactivity.

It's a fundamental shift that's needed to try and address that and you do that in three ways. You recognise that no one organisation can do it alone. You recognise that the only way you can reach communities is to properly understand it and the barriers that they face and work with those communities to try and overcome those barriers. And you do it by re-prioritising your investment to follow those decisions.

Amy: So what I actually hear you say is that you need community to reach community. You need people to come together as a bigger organisation.

Tim: My first and rather naive visit that I did in this job in 2018, so pre-pandemic, was into a community in Glodwick in Oldham and a place called Clemency House and a great guy that ran Clemency House, spent good time explaining what they did to me and one of the questions I said to him was, “What one thing would you like me to know?”

And he said, “just don't try and make us like you”.

And by that he meant, you know, if we seek to impose our view of the world or my personal view of the world, or what works or what motivated me onto a community where the circumstances are wholly different, you're never going to change people's approach. Similarly, I, rather again, you know, said “It's great that we're in these hard-to-reach communities”.

And he struck me down and said “We are not a hard-to-reach community. You’ve just not sought to reach out and reach us before”. And so learning lessons like that, you realise quickly that it's about how you behave. It's much more about the way in which you see the problem than it is about your predestined view of what a solution should be.

And if you can turn that telescope around, if you can think differently about a place, if you can recognise that those in the community and the organisations that are trusted by them are the ones that are going to actually enable things to happen, and then you can support that with resource and partnership, then you can change.

Amy: So actually the lens through which you view all of it is key, it really is. So actually if we look now, we move on from some of those current challenges to the key achievements that you’ve had within your time. That Active Lives Adult Survey that was published recently, actually in April 2025, that showed a record number of adults that are now meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s physical activity guidelines.

So, in your opinion, what have been the most crucial factors that have actually contributed to that increase in activity levels across England and not just in specific communities?

Tim: It's definitely true to say that in the decades since we started measuring activity levels through Active Lives, the most recent set of results showed that we've never been more active and we had a great significant drop in inactivity levels as well and that's a different thing and it's harder. Getting someone to move from doing nothing to something -

Amy: Is a bigger jump.

Tim: ... is a very different job to getting someone who's already active to do more. One of the things though I want to temper that with slightly is that we're still seeing the inequalities within that. So whilst the overall figure might be going up, there isn't yet the change we want to see in terms of really seeing the opportunity for those more inactive groups to have more opportunity.

So I think the job's only half done. I think Uniting The Movement as a strategy has done two fundamentally important things. I think it's brought the sector together around a shared purpose and intent, and it's made the language of what we are collectively here to do more common. So I hear frequently people not connected to Sport England referring to Uniting the Movement because they see it as being powerful for them too.

We want to tackle the inequalities that exist. We want to work with those communities who’ve previously been underserved. So the job is half done, in my view, coming at it halfway through the strategy nearly, where we've gone a long way to creating the conditions. We've done a long way of creating the partnerships. We've gone a long way to thinking about places and where we should be working.

We've gone a long way to think about where we can best make a difference, but we haven't yet seen the real changes that we want to see in terms of impact and the, you know, reduction in those inequalities that exist. So I'm quite sanguine about that. They are record levels, it’s brilliant.

But what I think is happening is the starting point for a journey. The best thing about the numbers that we got out a couple of months ago that related to the most recent Active Lives data, is that it saw the real bounceback from the ravages to those numbers that Covid created and particularly in areas like team sports, where we're back to where we were in pre-pandemic levels.

There’s over 3.5 million people that play team sports in this country, there's 30 million people who are active every week in this country now. Those are good numbers. They've taken us back to where we were headed before the pandemic took it back, you know, such a degree. But we haven't yet seen the real move in terms of inequality, that ultimately Uniting the Movement’s keen to drive.

That's where the focus needs to be going forward.

Amy: The foundation is there so the building needs to continue to make that impact and also to close the disparity, as you mentioned. And actually the Youth Sport Trust has specifically thanked you for your ‘relentless focus’ on young people and on children and increasing their physical activity levels. So what initiatives or changes have you specifically overseen that you believe will have the most lasting impact, hopefully, on youth engagement in sports?

Tim: Well, I think there's a load going on. I think there are great partnerships across the sector looking at how we can engage children, young people better, Youth Sport Trust being one of them. But I think there’s a classic example of where we are all now, I think, realising and understanding what needs to change, but not seeing the change happen in quite the same way.

One of the big issues that Uniting the Movement highlighted was the need to focus on children and young people. And that was right. I'm wondering now, perhaps in terms of thinking about what happens next if we don't redouble that effort. The numbers aren't still where we would want them to be.

Fewer than half of children and young people in this country are doing what the Chief Medical Officer describes as “an active life for a child”, which is 60 minutes on average a day every week.

Amy: Fewer than half?

Tim: Fewer than half. And again, the disparities within that are clear, not least again, in terms of socioeconomic circumstance. We're seeing really great strides and we're seeing ways of working starting to embed, which are positive and as they should be, not least around our place-based thinking but when you're thinking about children and young people, you really need to think differently.

There's a great example recently in Bradford, the JU:MP programme in Bradford, which was a direct investment into getting young people involved, the youth voice involved in designing the sport and physical activity that they wanted. Engaging families so that they could feel involved in that and recognising that it needs to be built into young people's lives and we've seen a massive improvement.

On average children in the Bradford study, as a result of the JU:MP programme, are doing 70 minutes a week now of sport and physical activity, compared to other parts of the country. So you've got this really important evidence base starting to emerge as well. I think philosophically as well, we should be focused on this more.

I like quoting US presidents. I quite like quoting Abraham Lincoln in particular.

Amy: Come on then, give us one!

Tim: He said, “Teach the children because then it's not necessary to teach the adult.”

Amy: I love that.

Tim: And I think that's where we should be in sport. If we can build in an active life as a habit for a young person, then we know as an adult they’re far more likely to carry it on. But one of the things that actually, and the Youth Support Trust, perhaps referring to this, is this understanding and belief that unless you make it child-centric and unless you think about a young person's physical literacy, so not just the opportunity, but also are they motivated, do they have the competency and most of all, is the experience going to be enjoyable?

Because if it's not fun, a young person is going to stop it the moment they can.

Amy: Yeah.

Tim: And we have not seemingly learned that lesson as sport, and we really need to learn that lesson so that the future generations embrace sport and physical activity and take it into their adult life.

Amy: That commitment is there when it's something that you love and you enjoy and you're passionate about, whatever that might be, but particularly -

Tim: And that affects the school experience.

You hear, you know, we've heard historically people said, “Oh, I loved playing sport at school.” “I hated sport at school.” Well, let's try and change that. Let's actually make the experience one that all children find valuable and inclusive in a way that makes sense for them. We do a brilliant programme for teenage girls called Studio You, which is a great example of how you can do that.

It's a Netflix-style online platform to help PE teachers and young girls themselves understand different ways that they can be active in a way that can build in things that matter to them. Concerns they might have, social activity that they might want to pursue. So it shouldn't only be about one solution. It’s that turning the telescope around again and saying, instead of looking down with a predestined view of what will change it, understand the problem, and then work out collectively what the solution might be.

Amy: It feels that that Uniting the Movement strategy has been such a huge part of your overall picture for your time here and also beyond when you are no longer with Sport England. But it's been a cornerstone of your leadership. And actually, what specific aspects of that 10-year strategy do you believe have been most impactful? Most impactful in transforming lives and communities through both physical activity and sport?

Tim: Well, I think as I sort of said before, the beauty now for me of Uniting the Movement, is it doesn't only exist as a strategy for Sport England. It feels one that has a shared intent and a shared motivation across the sector. And I think that's really important because actually at its heart is collaboration and the belief that you can't do this in a transactional, singular way.

You have to do this in a way where you build, you know, the systemic approach where everyone recognises the role that they're there to play and works in partnership to try and deliver it. And then also what Uniting the Movement did was very clearly rebalance the focus towards what matters as a nation that moves. We've really got to see it is that that's the primary goal.

And secondly, within that, the mission should be to rebalance that against the inequalities that exist. And I think up until that point that was considered, but it wasn't as starkly presented; that tackling of inequality. And I think it's right, because actually we're here with public money.

We should be unashamedly, disproportionately thinking, actually, who's been underserved previously and how can we actually rebalance that? So I’m, you know, deeply, personally invested into Uniting the Movement. I mean, it was great also in considering what the big issues are that we should focus on and look at, it was very good too at identifying some of the catalysts that are needed for change, some of which is happening, some of which, you know, happening less.

But the real power of it as a document and as a strategy is that it lives as a narrative, as a shared intent and has brought a sort of common purpose to a sector who previously were quite disparate. Still further to go, but, you know, I’m - or maybe my glass is half full when it comes to this.

I think we're in a better place now than we were to make the changes happen. Those that are saying, “well, the changes haven't happened” are right, but it means that we should double down on our intent.

Amy: Sport England's place-based work is a fundamental shift in how the organisation actually aims to increase physical activity and tackle inactivity across England. Can you just talk us through how did that approach differ from previous work to empower communities around sport and physical activity? What was the the point of difference there?

Tim: Well, it's an ongoing thing. It's been trialled for some time. So we set up 12 pilots, well before I joined actually, you know, back in 2017 I think the first ones were set up. And those pilots were a very deliberate attempt to work with a place. They were all characterised by one thing: the levels of inactivity that correlated to social inequality.

So there was a recognition that whether it was a single council estate, like the Hackney pilot, or it was a coastal small town like Withernsea, or it was Greater Manchester, you know, you had the same fundamental challenges to address. So how systemically can you work with a place to maximise the collective ambition and resource and then reach the communities through collectively understanding the challenges and the barriers that they faced?

And we've learned from those pilots that in many ways it is about the partnerships. It's about the relationships. It's about how you engage with local health, for example. So the public health agenda is one of the key drivers of change for sport and physical activity. If you have much more focus on preventative health, if you're working with now, you know, the preventative, the integrated care boards and other regional structures, you can start to think about ways that you can embed sport and physical activity better into a local community, working with the local authorities, working with the active partnerships, thinking about ways in which governing body programmes can provide for that.

Thinking about ways in which the leisure stock and capital investment can contribute, but you do it through the lens of thinking about what the needs, not saying “there’s X amount of capital to be spent on facilities, let's spread it out evenly across the country”. You think, no, these are places that need it most. What do they need? How can we learn from the local trusted organisations about what benefit that will bring?

And actually the pilot showed that it can work. And it showed perhaps that the key commonality to a place is not what you are doing in that place. It's how you work with that place. And that difference between what and how is a big part of the shift I think that we've taken as Sport England, in terms of place-based investment, and now we're putting 250 million pounds, over the next five years, into up to 80 or 90 places to work in this way, with further parts of that resource being made available universally because, you know, there is a fundamental principle that there should be some resource for everybody, but disproportionately it needs to go to those who need it most.

Amy: So looking ahead to the future now, and you've emphasised the importance of collaboration and that cross-governmental approach. But what specific actions are needed from government, and actually across various departments, to really maximise the impact of sport and physical activity on national health and also well-being?

Tim: I think one of the things for us, and we're not alone in this at all, you can see this in other sectors as well, is that we need better engagement and cross-functional working in government to be able to effect really what we want to to achieve. So we are actually thinking about going back to the place-based investment, about the health agenda, about the schools agenda, about the crime and justice agenda, about the active environments and, you know, and the built environment.

All of these things interconnect if you're going to try and create the opportunity for people to be more active. So actually getting policy at a national level to interconnect is the job of government. And that's where everybody, it's not a new thing, you know, is crying out for better cross-governmental thinking and working in terms of policy. And I hope that that will come.

I mean, one of the things that's very defining at the moment to the government missions and actually trying to say, “Right, there's a health mission. How can we best contribute to that?” “There's the opportunity mission. How can sport best contribute to that?” That's actually not about the health department or the schools department necessarily, or the Department for Education.

It's about how can those missions be best achieved. So if they really catch fire and come to life, you can start to see a mechanism through which better cross-government working can happen. And we really want to play our part because I think we can then see how sport at community level and the way in which people move and physical activity can be a really key part of preventative health. Can be a really key part of the Department For Education's agenda for our young people in terms of schools and provision in schools and attainment and behaviour and attendance.

These are things that we all worry about for our young people. Sport can help to provide for that.

Making those connections could actually serve so many of those different missions and departments. So actually, now I wanted to talk to you a little bit about playing fields. Again, that's something that you were keen to discuss. So they’re a fundamental asset for community sport and for physical activity. And we know there are so many benefits when we dig into those different areas.

Amy: As you look ahead, what do you believe are the most significant threats to the protection and the provision of those spaces? And what proactive steps must Sport England, and actually the wider sector, take in the coming years to make sure that they're adequately safeguarded for future generations?

Tim: If you think about the role of a pitch or a playing field or a facility, it has a fundamental role beyond actually the provision of sport. It's part of a community in many cases. It is the basis for a club. It is the basis for community interaction. So they have, in my view, a fundamental role in creating part of the fabric of our nation.

But they are also very valuably, and importantly, necessary for people to play sport and be active. You need the places and the spaces. So as we think about our active environments - I mean, leaving aside the playing fields and pitches for a moment, working, thinking differently about the National Trust and how it thinks about its open spaces. Forestry England, the Canal and River Trust, these are great organisations with whom we're really working closely now to think about how can we use their brilliant spaces to get people to move more, be more active and play sport?

But the actual pitch stock matters, and I recognise and can see the challenge at the moment and I share the government desire, I really do, as a citizen to enable us to think about a much more effective and speedy planning process. You can see big projects, infrastructure projects, housing projects that can get mired in the planning process and I completely understand why someone would look to resolve that.

I just hope that within that, we do not lose a mechanism for the protection of playing fields, which currently exist through Sport England having a statutory role in terms of consultation. Now, if that were to change as a result of the current government consultation, we would need to see how it would be retained in a different form, because without that protection, local authorities are not going to necessarily make that choice to protect that field when there's so many other pressures as well.

They may not have the expertise that we can currently provide in understanding the benefit of that playing field. And the biggest challenge, I think, we face as a nation is that when it comes to green space, when it's gone, it's gone. So if we really do want to protect the playing fields and the pitch stock of this country, we do need to think about the mechanism that enables any decision about change to properly reflect the role that that pitch currently plays.

Amy: I'd like to reflect really also on your personal takeaways from your time over the last seven years and having led Sport England, what's one particular memory or one initiative, and I know we keep coming back to Uniting the Movement, but if there's anything else that you feel is really, truly strengthened the team spirit and the internal culture of the organisation?

Tim: I think, I mean it's very easy to just go back a few years and say the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic really was the worst of times, but it was also the best of times if you wanted to bring people together in a way that it did, and I'm very proud of Sport England and our time then. I'm proud of the fact that we got recognised for that as well by the way in which we've perhaps enabled organisations that otherwise would have gone to the wall to survive, because that matters.

But more recently, I mean, one of the things that's come out of that period is the way that we work differently now in hybrid working and thinking about, you know, the great benefits of working from home, but the consequence lost potentially of the sort of collective. And my own personal reflection is I've never been happier than when we've had rare but really important opportunities to bring all of Sport England together in one place.

And thanks to our partners at the FA, I should say this - we were able to do that at Wembley Stadium last year and it was a brilliant day because the collective passion and energy in the room - to recognise that I had a part in that, to recognise that I had the relationships across these wonderful people and that we could hold together so much opportunity to create change.

I loved the days where we came together, basically, and I will miss those days whilst recognising that actually working differently, working smarter, working from home at times, thinking about people's personal lives, balancing with the professional life that they hold is really important too.

Amy: So after taking on that CEO role, what was the biggest surprise or maybe the biggest unexpected learning that you had - that you've encountered about sport or the physical activity sector, or maybe even about Sport England as an organisation? Anything that springs to mind?

Tim: The thing that always springs to mind is not necessarily a surprise because I was quite experienced in my previous life as to the sports sector and the role of Sport England. I think the thing that probably I hadn't anticipated was just the scale of people's expectations on Sport England, whether it was for money, whether it was for leadership, whether it was for strategy, policy, whether it was for guidance, whether it's for some sort of quasi-regulatory role.

At times I've used the line in saying that I think that people think, you know, Sport England’s the answer regardless of the question and that's certainly true when it comes to resource. You know, to go back to the earlier conversation that we had about health - we have comparatively quite a lot of money to spend over the course of a year, about 300 million. That equates to 14 hours of the NHS budget.

So if we're really thinking about what we have to spend, we can't do it alone, we have to work in partnership. I think the scale of the expectation on Sport England was something that did surprise me and the realisation that for many organisations it's the financial benefit of working with us. But it's much more than that. That sense that we are here to lead the sector.

Now, that's also a fantastic positive that I greatly embraced because I think we can, as a sports council working in partnership with others, affect change.

Amy: Beyond the major strategic achievement, is there a personal achievement or a personal moment that perhaps stands out during your time at Sport England or something that you really look back on with particular pride? Is it coming back again to that community feel with Uniting the Movement, or is there any other one standout moment?

Tim: I don't think there's a standout moment, actually. I think it would be wrong to sort of pick one. I mean, there are certain things that I personally, you know, have enjoyed and am very proud of.

I'm proud of the fact that whilst we have broadened our base of partnerships immensely and who we work with and how we recognise the spectrum of sport and physical activity is a broad one, we've built really positive relationships, for example, across the other home countries. That might not sound like a big deal, but I really enjoy working as a United Kingdom with UK Sport as well and thinking about the ways that we collectively can effect change.

I'm proud actually of our response to Black Lives Matter and the terrible murder of George Floyd in 2020 to collectively, as sports councils, come together and produce a report on racism in sport, which remains incredibly powerful now.

I'm proud of the fact that on the back of some horrendous experiences within gymnastics coming to life, we put together a review, the Whyte Review, that has created some fundamental change, not just in that sport, but also now in how we view safeguarding, welfare and integrity across sport generally. I'm quite proud too of the way in which the Football Foundation, of which we're a part working with government, the Football Association and the Premier League, has started to really think differently about the role that football plays in our community.

It's so powerful. And the pitch stock that’s needed for that and where place-based working can make a difference as well. So there's little things that don't sound in themselves particularly special, but are things that I know I'll reflect on and think, well, there's a bit that I personally did in that, that I can identify, that I'll look back on and think, well, that was probably the right thing to do.

Amy: And I hope you do take that away with some real pride. You should. You really should. If you could offer one piece of advice then to the incoming CEO, what springs to mind for that? Anything in particular that you would like to pass on?

Tim: Well, he's got some enormous experience and expertise to bring to Sport England quite a lot of which I don't necessarily have as much of in terms of running a complex organisation into this 21st century and thinking about digital change and transformation and becoming a delivery-focused organisation for the next stage of our journey. I'm really excited, therefore, that Simon Hayes has got that opportunity and will be doing the job.

I think probably two things for me. One is to recognise that in this role, it is a very relational role. It's about the people and it's about the organisations, and it's about how you represent and interact with the communities that you serve and the organisations that you support, as much as it is about the technical ability to do those things.

And then lastly, and I think this isn't just for my successor, this is for everybody - even on the bad days, just remember what a privilege it is to be able to produce and create the opportunity for more people to access community grassroots sport and physical activity. It is genuinely, for me, one of the most powerful tools we have in our collective societal, you know, toolbox, to effect change.

Sport can be so powerful in people's lives. The way that we can get people moving can make such a difference to them in terms of their health and their happiness. And the more you remember that, the more it's really wonderful to have the opportunity to do this job.

Amy: It's been wonderful to have the opportunity to talk to you about it and to reflect on that time and all that's left to do is to say thank you. So thank you very much.

Tim: Thank you very much indeed.

The video ends with the Sport England logo appearing in the middle of a blank, white screen.