As the first anniversary of the London Olympics nears, two influential former members of the organising committee board have raised fears about the legacy of the Games.
Against a backdrop of increasingly triumphalist claims from Westminster and City Hall that the Games are delivering on their legacy promises, Sir Keith Mills, the London 2012 deputy chairman, and Jonathan Edwards, the triple jump gold medallist and a Locog board member, have sounded a note of caution.
Mills said there was a "barmy" lack of joined-up thinking and called for an integrated national sports plan, driven by the prime minister, while Edwards raised concerns about school sport and local authority cuts.
Mills is seeking to support grassroots clubs that meet social needs up and down the country through his investment in his Sported foundation. He said: "You can never do enough. I'm frustrated that we could have and should have done more. But we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves.
"We have a problem, like most countries in the western world, with obesity. And sport participation across the board is very sticky. It's not growing as much as we want. I do think there is an opportunity for the government to be more joined up. It hasn't happened. I'd like the government to develop a national sports strategy that brings together health, education, sports clubs and local authorities. At the moment, they all pretty much do their own thing and that seems to me to be a real waste."
"For me the big step change would have been a national sports strategy, with organisations coming together to use the assets we've got. When you've got local authorities closing down facilities because of cuts but schools locking their doors despite having the facilities then that's barmy.
Mills, who was chief executive of the London 2012 bid team that secured the Games in 2005 partly due to its legacy vision, said it was not too late to create a more joined-up sports strategy, echoing calls from Lord Coe, the former London 2012 chairman, last week for a 10-year legacy vision. But Mills said individual sports had also missed a trick in the wake of the post-Olympic surge in interest.
The Tottenham Hotspur director and Air Miles founder had attempted to bring Olympic sports together under one banner as the British Sports Marketing Bureau in order to help realise their commercial potential. But of the 70 sports approached around half, including cycling and athletics, were reluctant and the idea is now dead.
"The concept was that if sports worked together they could be more successful than the sum of their parts. Look at the Premier League. Manchester United is one of the biggest sports brands in the world but they realise that working together with the other teams is more valuable. That was the message I tried to take to the sports after the Games," said Mills, who recently launched a corporate fundraising drive for Sported.
"But because of the parochial nature of sport, with everyone competing with each other, they have all lost. It's not going to happen now. There are about 70 major sports bodies and we got just about half of them. But that's not enough – it only works if they want it to work."
Edwards said that the impact of local authority cuts on sports facilities was a major threat to the delivery of the legacy of the Games. Earlier this year, Guardian research revealed cuts of over 40% to sport and recreation budgets in some parts of the UK.
He said: "What really hits legacy out and about is the fact local authorities are so cash-strapped. You're having to pay extra for bin collection and they're being hit with another potential 10% so they're really struggling. "It's very, very hard for councils. There are all sorts of issues there. You can see that repairing the sports centre roof or putting on coaching sessions isn't very far up their list of priorities."
