sport-england-2016-17-annual-report-and-accounts

Safeguarding sports provision
One of our roles as the government’s
arms -length body responsible for grassroots
sport is to object to developments on playing
fields if the provision of sport and activity will
be negatively affected.
We will often negotiate a new facility being built
or existing pitches being upgraded so that more
people are able to get active in their local area.
Our most recent figures show that in 2014 -15*:
• 91% (1,139 out of 1,254) of concluded planning
applications affecting playing fields resulted
in improved or safeguarded sports provision
• In 43% of cases where we originally objected
to an application, our intervention and further
negotiation led to an overall improvement
in sports provision
• The remainder (57%) were either withdrawn,
refused by the local authority or are yet
to be determined
• Despite our objections during the planning
process, 115 applications (9%) were approved
by local planning authorities.
* Planning application results are delayed by 12 months
to allow for appeals.
Generating extra investment
Our role as a consultee on planning applications
also allows us to generate additional investment
into sports facilities by ensuring that new housing
developments are given adequate access to
local sporting infrastructure. Through firm
negotiation and the provision of tools such as
the Sports Facilities Calculator we generated
an additional £16 million investment into sport
in 2015 -16.
We further boosted local sporting infrastructure
during the same period by securing 144
community use agreements that allow local
people to use the school, college or university
sports facilities.
The original plans for Northstowe, a new town
with 10,000 dwellings in Cambridgeshire,
included community sports facilities
on three sites. We considered the facilities
to be inadequate and lacked a robust sports
strategy – something that ’ s crucial if they ’ re
going to last and be used by a wide range
of people. As a result of our objections, the
applicant reviewed the sport strategy and
agreed to invest an additional £1.4 million in:
• An extra 2.2 hectares of grass playing fields
• An additional full -size 3G artificial grass pitch
• Four floodlit multi -use games areas (MUGA),
at the new secondary school but available for
community use.
Improving our function
We’ve also been implementing the
recommendations set out in the DCMS
triennial review (published in September 2015).
This included developing a memorandum of
understanding between ourselves and UK Sport,
which was published in January 2017. It outlines
how we will work together to jointly fund talent
programmes and develop performance.
We also developed a common monitoring and
evaluation approach to all investments – helping
us compare success and continually improve all
of our programmes and investments.
For more on the recommendations, go to
sportengland.org/triennialreview