This chapter examines some key aspects of the politics and policy of community sport coaching in England. It briefly: (i) examines the current and broadening policy landscape within which community sport coaches work; (ii) explores how community sport coaches’ work is increasingly perceived by government in terms of its contribution to non-sporting, rather than sport-for-all, objectives; and (iii) discusses how community sport coaching, as an aspect of the increasingly vulnerable and marginalised sport policy sector, is reshaping the role of the coach in delivering government’s policy priorities. We discuss how community sport coaches are now enmeshed in policy networks which constrain them increasingly to prioritise the delivery of government’s non-sport outcomes alongside the promotion of physical activity, and suggest that this raises a series of important questions about the nature and professional status of coaching, the role of the coach, and the status of sport as a policy sector. We also argue that the expected role of the community sport coach in delivering sport and non-sport objectives is becoming increasingly blurred and widened, and suggest that this is interdependent with the increasingly vulnerable and marginalised sport policy sector
