Section 1
What this calculator is for
Proof of Play helps community sports clubs estimate the social value they add through participation and volunteering. It applies Sport England's published social value model (Year 2, November 2025, produced with Sheffield Hallam University, Manchester Metropolitan University and State of Life) to a club's own numbers, and turns the result into a report, press release and funding guide.
Sport England's values use the WELLBY approach set out in HM Treasury's wellbeing guidance for appraisal (2021): a change in life satisfaction is given a monetary value. Proof of Play does not estimate any wellbeing effects itself. It takes Sport England's published per-person values and applies them at club level.
What Proof of Play is
A transparent estimate of the social value a club adds, built from published national values and club-reported numbers, with every assumption stated and every figure reproducible.
What Proof of Play is not
A formal Social Return on Investment (SROI) study, an audited valuation, a measurement of an individual club's players, or a clinical assessment. Figures are estimates and should be presented as such.
Section 2
What goes into the calculation
Every figure is either reported by the club or calculated from national values. Both types are labelled throughout the tool.
Reported by the club
- Players by age group and gender
- Players with a disability or long-term health condition
- Volunteers who help weekly, and their hours
- Volunteers who help monthly, and their hours
- Annual club spending (optional, for the cost ratio)
- Community programme reach (recorded, not valued)
- Club postcode (for area deprivation context)
- Sessions per week (for the report only; does not change the figure)
Calculated from national values
- Participant wellbeing value
- Health and productivity value (adults)
- Volunteer wellbeing value
- Value of volunteer time
- Deduction for what would have happened anyway
- Social value to cost ratio
- Estimated counts of players with a mental health condition or who may be neurodivergent (no £ value)
Section 3
How the figure is built
1
Wellbeing. Each player is valued at Sport England's average for their age group, taking the national mix of active, fairly active and less active people (Section 5). Adults £2,391; children 11–16 £2,813; children 7–11 £1,713; children 5–6 £0. Players aged 16–18 are valued as adults, because Sport England's adult survey covers everyone aged 16 and over. Disabled players use cautious values (Section 5).
2
Health and productivity. Players aged 16 and over: £456 each on average (£478 active, £330 fairly active). This is the cost of illness avoided for health services, social care, families and employers. It is not an NHS-only saving. Children: £0, because Sport England finds the evidence for children insufficient.
3
Volunteer wellbeing. £2,100 for each weekly volunteer and £1,000 for each monthly volunteer. Less frequent volunteering: £0. Sport England controls for activity level, so a player who also volunteers can be counted for both without double counting.
4
Deduction for what would have happened anyway. Steps 1 to 3 added together are the value associated with participation at the club. We deduct 40% from them for activity that would have happened without the club, other things in people's lives that contribute, and players who would play elsewhere (Section 5).
5
Volunteer time. Volunteer hours × £13.20, what it would cost to pay someone to do the same work. This is not reduced by the 40%, because the hours were actually given.
6
Headline figure = (wellbeing + health + volunteer wellbeing) × 0.6 + volunteer time. Reports show the figure both before and after the deduction. "Generates" and "adds" are only used with the figure after the deduction.
7
Social value to cost ratio = (wellbeing + health + volunteer wellbeing) × 0.6 ÷ (club spending + value of volunteer time). Volunteer time is counted once, as a cost. A club with high running costs can have a ratio below £1; the ratio is a guide, not a verdict on the club.
Reproducible
Every number above is calculated in the tool from the stated values. An independent spreadsheet rebuild of the engine reproduces the live calculator to the penny. It is available on request with the technical note.
Section 4
Where the values come from
Values from Sport England are in 2024 prices. Table and page numbers refer to Sport England, The social value of sport and physical activity in England, Year 2 (November 2025): the primary value report unless the secondary value report is named.
| Category | Value applied | How it is used | Source | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wellbeingadults 16+ | £2,391 average | Active £2,600, fairly active £1,200, weighted by the national split among adults who do some activity (63.7% active, 11.2% fairly active). Club members are counted as at least fairly active. | Table 4 (values), Table 14 (split) | High |
| Wellbeingchildren 11–16 | £2,813 average | Active £4,300, fairly active £3,300, less active £0; national split 49.0% / 21.4% / 29.6%. | Table 6, Table 14 | High |
| Wellbeingchildren 7–11 | £1,713 average | Active £3,100, fairly active £1,700, less active £0; national split 43.8% / 20.9% / 35.3%. | Table 8, Table 14 | High |
| Wellbeingchildren 5–6 | £0 | No published value for this age group. | n/a | n/a |
| Wellbeingdisabled adults | £4,687 (cautious) | £5,300 is published only for disabled adults who are active. We apply it to the active share and the general fairly-active value (£1,200) to the rest. | Table 17, p43 | Medium |
| Wellbeingdisabled children | £1,372 (cautious) | £2,800 is published only for disabled 11–16-year-olds who are active. We apply it to the active share (49.0%) and count no value for the rest, because nothing is published for them. | Table 18, p44 | Medium |
| Health & productivityadults 16+ | £456 average | Active £478, fairly active £330, including productivity. Healthcare, social care and informal care alone: £301 / £223. | Secondary value report, Tables 3.4 and 3.6 | Medium |
| Health & productivitychildren | £0 | "There continues to be insufficient robust evidence to support the inclusion of health outcomes for children." | Secondary value report, p13 | High |
| Volunteeringwellbeing | £2,100 weekly / £1,000 monthly | Less frequent volunteering: £0. Adds to playing value without double counting (p38). | Table 11, p34 | High |
| Volunteeringtime | £13.20 / hour | Replacement cost. 2021/22 prices; uprated to 2024 prices it would be about £15.30, so the tool is cautious here. | DCMS / London Economics, Estimating the economic and social value of volunteering, July 2025, Table 2 | High |
| Mental healthcount only | 20.3% / 23.3% / 22.6% | 7–16s, 16–18s and adults respectively. No £ value attached. | NHS England, MHCYP 2023 (8–16, 17–19); Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2023/4 (16–64) | Medium |
| Neurodivergencecount only | 10–20% (default 14%) | Our own estimate built from published figures for individual conditions. No single published figure exists. No £ value attached. | NHS England; British Dyslexia Association | Low |
| ContextWELLBY | £15,900 (2024) | Not applied directly: it is already inside Sport England's per-person values. HM Treasury's central value is £13,000 in 2019 prices (range £10,000–£16,000); £15,900 is Sport England's uprating to 2024. | HM Treasury wellbeing guidance (2021), p57; Sport England primary report, p16 | High |
Section 5
The assumptions we make
These are Proof of Play's own choices, not published values. Each is stated so anyone can disagree with it and see the effect.
A
The 40% deduction. One combined allowance for deadweight (activity that would happen anyway), attribution (other things in people's lives that contribute) and displacement (players who would play elsewhere). It is not a Sport England or HM Treasury figure. The closest published reference point is the 39.5–43% average deadweight reported in the HCA Additionality Guide (4th edition, 2014, Table 3.2), which comes from economic development programmes rather than sport. At 20% a club's headline would be roughly 25–30% higher; at 60%, roughly 25–30% lower. The ratio moves by a third either way.
B
The national activity mix. Sport England measures activity in minutes across the whole week (adults: active = 150+ minutes; children: active = 60+ minutes a day). Club sessions cannot tell us that, so we apply Sport England's national mix for each age group. A club whose players are more active than average is undervalued; one whose players are less active, overvalued. Real activity data, where an organisation holds it, could replace this.
C
Cautious disability values. Sport England publishes disability values only for people who are active. We do not assume every disabled player is active, so the values we use are lower than the published figures.
D
46 volunteering weeks a year. Our own assumption for the length of a season plus pre-season. No published source.
E
No deprivation multiplier. Area deprivation is shown for funding context but does not change the £ figure. Sport England's subgroup analysis does not find a higher wellbeing value for active people in deprived areas (pp43–44); its case for targeting deprived areas is that more people there start inactive.
Section 6
How outputs should and should not be used
✓ Good uses
- Grant applications, presented as estimates alongside your own evidence
- AGM and committee reporting
- Conversations with councils, sponsors and governing bodies
- Comparing your own figures year on year using the same methodology version
✗ Unsuitable uses
- Presenting estimates as audited or precise
- Quoting the figure before the deduction as what the club "generates"
- Presenting mental health or neurodivergence counts as diagnosed individuals
- Calling the cost ratio an SROI
- Comparing figures produced with different methodology versions
Suggested wording
an estimate using Sport England's social value model
after a 40% deduction for what would have happened anyway
club-reported numbers, national values
Proof of Play methodology v2.0
estimated count, not a diagnosis
not a formal SROI or audit
Section 7
Limits
1
National averages, not your players. The values are averages from national surveys applied to your numbers. They estimate likely value; they do not measure what happened to any individual.
2
Club-reported inputs. The figure is only as good as the numbers entered. The tool does not verify them.
3
England only. Sport England's values come from survey data in England. The Scottish edition is paused while it is reviewed against Scottish evidence.
4
A one-year snapshot. Like Sport England's own model, the figure is a single year's value. It does not project future benefits.
5
Not all value is captured. Community programmes, mentoring, community safety and other outcomes have no defensible published value and are not included in the £ figure.
6
Price years differ. Sport England values are 2024 prices; the volunteer rate is 2021/22 prices. Using the older rate makes the volunteer figure cautious.
Section 8
Version history
Every saved figure is stamped with the methodology version that produced it. Earlier figures are not silently replaced: when the method changes, stored club figures are recalculated and re-stamped, and figures that cannot be recalculated are marked as coming from an earlier methodology.
| Version | Date | What changed and why |
|---|---|---|
| v1 (launch) | Before April 2026 | Sport England values applied by sessions per week; volunteer time at £17/hr; a £650 community value per participant; ratio against club spending only; no deduction. |
| v1.1 | April 2026 | Following an internal review: the £650 community value was removed (it had been taken from an unrelated HM Treasury example); volunteer rate changed to the DCMS / London Economics £13.20/hr; a 40% deduction added; volunteer time added to the cost side of the ratio; "SROI" label dropped; health value relabelled to include productivity. The review also recommended changing the adult and child wellbeing values; that recommendation was checked against Sport England's published tables, found to be incorrect, and not adopted. |
| v2.0 | October 2026 | Following a source-by-source review against the primary publications: activity valued using Sport England's national activity mix instead of sessions per week; 16–18s valued as adults; the 10% deprivation uplift removed (not supported by Sport England's analysis); the child health value removed (excluded by Sport England); disability values applied cautiously; weekly and monthly volunteers valued separately; volunteer time no longer reduced by the deduction and counted only as a cost in the ratio; the "Value at Stake" £ figure removed; mental health and neurodivergence shown as counts only; figures shown before and after the deduction. All stored club figures with saved inputs were recalculated on 11 October 2026. |
Technical note
A technical note with the full calculation chain, the sources table with page references, a worked example and sensitivity ranges is available on request: danny@withinu.net.