Under the proposals UK Sport, Sport England and the Youth Sport Trust will be merged into one body.

They are part of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) announcement today by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that 55 public bodies are set to be merged, abolished or streamlined as part of the Government’s drive to cut costs and increase transparency, accountability and efficiency.

Robertson exclusively told insidethegames that under the proposal UK Sport, Sport England and Youth Sport will form a new body that will be answerable to a single governing board.

He told insidthegames: "It is our intention to bring them together under one roof into a new body that will have three separate divisions that will exactly replicate the existing functions of UK Sport, Sport England and the Youth Sport Trust.

"It will be one body that has a elite high-performance division, community division and a school sports division.

"And I think that will better serve British sport going forward."

UK Sport funds elite Olympic athletes and aims to develop promising sports stars while Sport England funds grassroots sports in terms of facilities and coaching and the Youth Sport Trust have the mandate to develop sport in schools.

Since UK Sport was established by Royal Charter in 1997, Britain has enjoyed unprecdented success at the Olympics and Parlaympics.

It culminated at Beijing in 2008 when Britain finished fourth overall in the medals table with 47 medals, 19 of them gold, including for Nicole Cooke (pictured) in the road cycle race.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have similar funding bodies to Sport England and a statement from the DCMS said: "Where proposed changes have implications for the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland we will work closely with them to finalise proposals."

Robertson said that the constitution of the new body still had to be worked out.

He told insidethegames: "We are not there yet as to quite what the governing structure will be.

"That is open to negotiation.

"The one thing I am sure of is that when you look at British sport moving forward post-2012 it would be better served by one body rather than three separate ones.

"Simply so that they all coordinate what they do better, its more streamlined, its more modern and actually, crucially, in a time when public expenditure is tight as it is it is absolutely incumbent on us to make sure as much money as possible goes through those arm-length bodies and into the world of sport.

"Cutting down the administrative spend is a key part of this."

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