UK Sport has closed the public consultation on its future investment principles and how best to inspire the nation through elite success.
The consultation was launched on June 4 this year and was open for 11 weeks before closing on August 19.
It asked for views on how best for UK Sport to allocate its National Lottery and taxpayer funding post the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with the new funding strategy due to come into effect from April 2021.
In total, 4923 people submitted responses to the consultation which is a huge increase on the last UK Sport Public Consultation in 2014, when there were 924 people that responded.
In addition to the online survey, workshops and in depth interviews were held with stakeholders, partners, politicians, government officials, representatives from the media and the public.
The online consultation and the workshops were run by two independent consultation agencies, Future Thinking and The Sports Consultancy, to ensure that the consultation was independent and impartial.
All consultation responses will be now be analysed by Future Thinking and The Sports Consultancy and summarised for the UK Sport Board in an independent report.
This will be considered alongside other evidence-gathering from UK Sport (which has included a series of sessions with athletes and external industry experts) to enable the Board to make fully informed decisions as to the future funding strategy of high performance sport in the UK.
The UK Sport Board will then decide the future funding strategy by early 2019, when the final independent consultation report will also be published externally.
UK Sport CEO Liz Nicholl said:
“We are delighted that there has been a significant response to our Public Consultation, which demonstrates real interest in Olympic and Paralympic sport in the UK as well as its future direction.
“As an investor of significant public funds in elite sport, it is right that UK Sport should check in with the general public to ask whether you want us to continue aiming to inspire the nation through medal success and whether we should change our focus in any way.
“All the responses will be analysed by independent consultants and our Board will use this evidence alongside other commissioned research, to develop our future strategy.
“I would like to thank everyone that has contributed to the Public Consultation and we are committed to publishing both the independent analysis and the emerging Board considerations early next year.”