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Performance related pay: what Whitehall should learn from UK Sport

The latest allocations from UK Sport show their rigorous performance management scheme in action. Two days after Bradley Wiggins lifted the SPOTY trophy, cycling emerged as a big winner from UK Sport’s funding round – along with boxing, taekwondo, rowing, canoeing and equestrian. All of these are sports that delivered medals in line with or above expectations at London 2012.

And others suffered cuts – notably swimming, which underperformed in the fantastic Aquatic centre with two bronzes and a silver; archery, volleyball and badminton which were all medal-free zones. The clear message is that sports federations who deliver results get funded – and those that don’t, get cut. The day before UK Sport’s funding announcements, their grassroots equivalent – Sport England – delivered a tough message to the Lawn Tennis Association, withholding £10 million of their funding until grassroots participation in tennis increases. Andy Murray may have become the first male grand slam winner for seventy plus years, but the number of people playing tennis was falling and the LTA did not have a convincing plan to reverse that decline. This ruthless approach to non-delivery is too often the exception rather than the rule in the public sector. The typical response elsewhere is routinely to decide that the under-performers need more, not less. As our research shows the management information needed to make this sort of decision is frequently missing – neither sought by departments, nor provided. And at root is a feeling that evidence of whether something works or not is irrelevant – or injurious – to future funding. At a seminar on evidence and evaluation in policy making we held in February, Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social research identified the incentive problem: “the difficult thing… is trying to make ministers think that if they commit to evaluating their stuff vigorously it’s more likely their budget will increase than if they don’t, as they’ll be able to demonstrate both to the Treasury and – probably more importantly – to the public and political classes that they deserve more money. Unfortunately that is not the way our political dynamic works most of the time.” Medals provide very tangible and public evidence of performance. What has driven the UK up the medal table in recent years is the determination to link funding very explicitly to that performance – and to divert funding from less productive areas. The UK Sport performance table tracks which sports are on course – and which are off course. Swimming was assessed as amber in this table as the Olympic Torch landed in the UK; most of those similarly well-funded sports which banked large numbers of medals were rated green. As we seek to learn lessons from the success of the Olympic construction program and operational delivery, there are lessons to be learnt from the triumph of our athletes too. It was not just luck and talent that got Team GB a record medal haul – it was rigorously managed investment as well.

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