To ask the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, pursuant to AQO 6931/11-15, what support and funding opportunities her Department can offer to existing grassroots level sports initiatives that wish to expand.

As I advised in my previous answer to AQO 6931/11-15, Sport NI provides a range of support services and resources to assist those groups wishing to expand, which includes the provision of funding through the Active Awards for Sport programme.

Sport NI will allocate approximately £500,000 of Lottery funding to successful applicants through Round 3 of Active Awards for Sport Programme which closed on 13 April 2015. Sport NI received a total of 280 valid applications by the closing date, requesting total funding of £1,734,873. These are currently being assessed and it is anticipated that Letters of Offer will be issued to successful applicants by mid June 2015.

In addition, on 18 May 2015, Sport NI launched a capital programme which aims to invest Lottery funding of £17.5 million into sports facility projects over a five year period. The facility fund will invest in facilities through three strands:-

Single Facility: single-sport facilities which seek to increase participation within the club structure

Multi Facility: multi-sport facilities which seek to increase participation across local communities

Performance Facility: performance sport facilities which meet the needs of community participants and high performance athletes within the same multi-sport environment

Sport NI will deliver a number of workshops commencing at the end of May, at this stage specifically for the Single Facility strand, to support potential applicants through the investment process. Details of these workshops can be found at: - http://www.sportni.net/news/sport-northern-ireland-launches-17-5m-investment-for-sports-facilities/

Furthermore, Sport NI offers a ‘signposting’ and funding advice service to organisations (including sports clubs and community groups) who are registered on Sport NI’s Funding Database. The Sport NI website provides information on funding opportunities available from a number of alternate sources including Big Lottery Fund, Comic Relief and a range of other charitable funding organisations.