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As dull-but-worthy stories go, it is hard to top a tale about the merger of two non-departmental public bodies.

But trust me, Monday’s announcement that Sport England and UK Sport are to become a single agency (they hate the word quango) is less boring and more important than it sounds.

Before I explain why, however, I should probably tell you what they do.

Sport England funds grassroots projects and is responsible for boosting participation in sport and protecting the country’s playing fields.

UK Sport bankrolls Team GB’s Olympic and Paralympic preparations. It is all about elite activity and sits at the top of British sport’s participation pyramid.

Clearly, there is some crossover in what they do but the two areas of expertise and responsibility are pretty separate.

Between them, they spend about £200m of public money a year at the moment, with much of this coming from the National Lottery. And they are currently, according to most reasonable judges, doing decent jobs.

Of course, the same could probably be said of the other agencies the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has decided to “abolish, declassify or merge”.

I know little about the UK Film Council’s work, what the Advisory Council on Libraries does or how busy the Advisory Committee on Historic Wreck Sites is, but I am sure there are people at these agencies wondering what they have done to deserve the DCMS chop.

The development of elite British athelets could be affected by the changes

The problem, of course, is that the country is skint. If we cannot afford to build hospitals and schools, we will probably have to make do with less advice for our libraries/historic wrecks and Sport England and UK Sport will just have to hot-desk a little bit and share photocopiers.

That is how I imagine the “debate” within DCMS went, anyway, because while I understand the need to “cut costs and increase transparency, accountability and efficiency” as much as the next taxpayer, I cannot help thinking the sport decision is lazy and unimaginative.

Why? Let me number the ways.

First, we have spent decades bumbling along at the elite level, achieving the occasional success despite the “system”, only to get our acts together in the last decade and properly invest time and money in our best sportsmen and women.

The results have been incredible, with Team GB moving from 36th in the Olympic medal table in Atlanta in 1996, to 10th in Sydney and Athens, to fourth in Beijiing.

UK Sport is held up around the globe as an example of how you run elite sport. Having borrowed ideas and people from abroad, the world is now copying us.

Second, Sport England has been constantly interfered with over the last decade as ministers have changed strategies and targets. The last couple of years, however, have seen the latest “trust the sports” approach start to work.

Duplication of effort has been trimmed and participation levels are rising, albeit slowly. The last thing Sport England needs is another new strategy.

Three, as you may have noticed, the Olympics are now just two years away. This is both the biggest piece of work and greatest opportunity British sport will get in most of our lifetimes.

Is this really the best time for the government to be asking the two most important agencies in this area to be worrying about a merger?

Four, grassroots sport in the UK is a devolved issue. Sport England has counterparts in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. UK Sport, however, works across the nations.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has had to make cuts

Any marriage of convenience will have to accommodate this complexity. Will a merged English one-stop shop work any better with the Celtic fringe than the current grassroots/elite split?

And where does the third leg on British sport’s stool fit into Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s “streamlined” world?

The Youth Sports Trust was rumoured to be included in the merger, only for people to realise it is an independent charity with a perfectly good base up in Loughborough.

When asked for clarification, DCMS staff could only say the YST, which looks after school sport, would be “encouraged to work closely with the new body”.

I could go on with reasons why shunting two organisations together is not always a sure-fire way of ensuring “fantastic culture, media and sport” but I think you get the picture.

(For his part, Robertson said the move would provide more money for sport, while lottery cash and private sector income should also increase.)

Sadly, this kind of solution is always going to be the default reaction of a country that does not really take sport very seriously.

Yes, I know we have spent the last month bleating about the World Cup, Wimbledon and any other sporting event we shamefully failed to win, but we consistently fail to see sport as a solution to some of our most glaring problems: childhood obesity, diabetes, social exclusion, teenage crime and so on.

These are serious issues and they require serious, joined-up solutions.

Last month, Hunt announced the abolition of the free swimming for under-16s and over-60s. It was not the greatest government programme in British history but it was not the worst either. It was also pretty inexpensive.

But what I liked about it was that it was funded by a range of government departments, most of them much bigger and better-resourced than DCMS. Most importantly it received cash from Health and Education. Here was a sports-based policy that took sport seriously.

I fear Monday’s merger news is a return to the days when sport was at best a bonus, and at worst just for thickies. Hardly the type of message we want to send with London 2012 looming large on the horizon.

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What looks like a dull story reveals Britain’s attitude to sport