Active Partnerships National Organisation Announces New Suppliers for Key Programmes

The Active Partnerships National Organisation (APNO) has announced the appointment of two new suppliers to support the monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) for two of its Sport England funded programmes, the Sport Welfare Officer (SWO) network and the Multi-Sport Activity and Facilities Fund. The announcement follows the recent invitation to tender issued for this important area of work.

After a robust commissioning process, for the Sport Welfare Officer network, APNO has awarded contracts to Ecorys UK and Professor Melanie Lang of the Centre for Child Protection and Safeguarding in Sport, Edge Hill University, and in addition, Substance has been appointed as the MEL supplier for the multi-sport programme evaluation. 

These experienced organisations will be tasked with developing comprehensive evaluation and learning plans, as well as creating robust data collection tools for each programme. Their roles will be pivotal in ensuring the quality and consistency of data collection across local Active Partnerships and supporting a coordinated approach with national evaluations and learning contracts.

In addition to their data management responsibilities, the new suppliers will conduct national-level analysis and produce insightful reports that will be shared with key stakeholders.

Their work on these projects began last month and will continue until May 2027, marking a significant phase in the analysis of these important programmes.

The approach proposed by the chosen suppliers provided the best overall fit for each programme and their specific MEL requirements and the tenders inspired confidence in their ability to generate robust outputs for each project.

Laura Middleton, Strategic Lead for Welfare for the Active Partnerships National Organisation, said: “It is great to be able to confirm Ecorys and Edge Hill University as our national evaluation partners as they will help us all to better understand the value of the Sport Welfare Officer network, analysing what’s working and what isn’t, so that we can adapt our approach where necessary and ensure that the SWO network is as effective and impactful as possible.”

Shirley Hurst, Strategic Lead for Football and Multi-Sport for the Active Partnerships National Organisation, said: “We are delighted to confirm Substance as our national evaluation partner for the muti-sport programme and I’m sure that their work will enable us to really get under the surface of community engagement and partnership working. We are confident that their expertise will bring fresh insights and that their experience of working on previous evaluation projects, with a wide range of national and local partners, will add extra value and learning to the work .”

James Sennett Associate Director, Policy and Research at Ecorys said: “Through our role in providing robust analysis of the Sport Welfare Officer Network’s impacts and supporting the Active Partnerships National Organisation to share good practice and learning across the Network, we are very pleased to have the opportunity to support the Active Partnerships’ ambitions to add value and make a positive difference to safeguarding and welfare practices in grassroots sport.”

Dr Kath Edgar, Head of Research at Substance, added: “Substance is delighted to be working alongside the Active Partnerships National Organisation as its monitoring, evaluation and learning partner for the Multi-Sport Activity and Facilities Fund Programme. We are supporting the creation of a comprehensive evaluation plan ensuring quality and consistently high standards of varied data are generated across the system. Local as well as national-level insights and lessons will be generated and consideration to integrate with other related national evaluations”.

To find out more about each programme of work, please go to Sport Welfare Officer Network and Multi-Sport Activity and Facilities Fund.