The chair of the All-Party Tennis Group has described the £640,000 salary of Lawn Tennis Association chief executive Roger Draper as “unthinkable”. Details of Draper’s salary were published for the first time last week. On Monday, Sport England cut the LTA’s funding, criticising its plans for increasing participation. “It’s unthinkable that someone earning four times more than the Prime Minister has not got ideas for the shake-up of the sport,” Baroness Billingham said. “You don’t give bonuses for failure, surely, and a priority has to be placed on grassroots sport. “The LTA is one of the wealthiest sporting organisations in the country and it’s my honest and genuine opinion that they are useless.” The LTA published details of Draper’s salary for the first time last week. He received a basic wage of £394,000, a bonus of £201,000 and a pension contribution of £45,000. This was a £42,000 increase on his package of £598,000 in 2011. Prime Minister David Cameron earns £142,000 a year. The details of Draper’s salary were published days before Sport England announced its decision to withhold three years’ funding from the LTA for grassroots tennis. The number of people playing tennis once a week has fallen from 487,500 in 2008 to 445,100 in 2012, and Sport England decided to give the LTA just one year’s funding of £7.1m.
