Shaping the UK's sports landscape

CCPR went on to become the UK's most influential sports organisation, providing and organising participation, speaking on behalf of sports bodies and working towards a goal of allowing everyone who wanted to take sport or recreation the chance to do so.

Amongst its other notable achievements, CCPR:

• continued to develop organised coaching courses for governing bodies.
• created at Bisham Abbey in 1946 the first 'National Physical Recreation Centre', which is still in use today.
• organised in the same year the Festival of Youth, with 8,000 participants, to demonstrate that the ‘austerities of six years of war had not deadened the spirits of the younger generation’!
• set up the second National Recreation Centre at Lilleshall.
• along with the London County Council set up the first purpose built sports centre in the country at Crystal Palace.
• organised the first ever conference for administrators of sport and recreation.
• with Nottingamshire County Council, established the Holme Pierrepont National Water Sports Centre.
• inaugurated the first international conference on women in sport.
• launched the Community Sports Leader Award, an award which is now made to 130,000 people a year.