Sports Management Issue 1 2012 - Leisure Opportunities

SPORTS HALLS
To meet participation
targets and support
athletes, NGBs need
access to well specified,
correctly-sized facilities
KKP’s David
McHendry
discusses the
benefits of
choosing correctly-sized
indoor sports facilities that
work well for indoor sports
and offer a sound business
model for the operator
DEVELOPING THE
RIGHT SPORTS HALL
H
ow large should a sports hall
be in order to offer high-quality
sporting opportunity and
a decent, sustainable level of
return for the operator This is the question
that Sport England has been seeking
to address via its 2011 publication Developing
the Right Sports Hall.
Specialists from the national governing
bodies (NGBs) of netball, basketball, badminton,
volleyball and cricket have come
together to assess whether and how it is
possible to specify at the core unit level –
a space that enables each of the sports to
be played at the requisite level of quality
– and to set out the process that agencies
should use to assess this.
Knight, Kavanagh and Page (KKP) – an
independent specialist consultancy in
sports, leisure, culture, regeneration and
green spaces – was tasked by Sport England
to prepare practical guidance on the
sporting and business benefits of the proposed
larger hall models. This included
direct centre management and business
planning expertise, work focused on
management, programming and usage
flexibility that new specifications may
offer, as well as the accompanying fiscal
benefits and sustainability.
One size fits all
Historically, sports hall size evolved
around the practical space required to
accommodate four badminton courts
and in general they have become larger
and taller. When the old GB Sports Council’s
Standardised Approach to Sports
Halls (SASH) programme was rolled out
in the early 1980s, the recommended
specification for floor-space was 32m x
17m. This worked for badminton but left
other sports somewhat cramped; the
touchlines for a netball court were, for
example, virtually on the skirting boards
and there was little or no run off space
for umpires, scorers, coaches and other
team members.
However, these needs have since been
addressed and so the 33m x 18m sports
hall specification has become the norm.
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Issue 1 2012 © cybertrek 2012