Assessing need and demand

Local authorities need to carry out assessments of need and demand based on the typology and method outlined in the Companion Guide to PPG17. The long term outcomes PPG 17 aims to deliver are:

1. Networks of accessible, high quality open spaces and sport and recreation facilities, in both urban and rural areas, which meet the needs of residents and viitors, are fit for purpose and economicaly and environmentally sustainable.
2. An appropriate balance between new provision and the enhancement of existing provision.

Clarity and reasonable certainty for devleoper and land owners in relation to he requirments and expectations of local planning authorities in respect of open space and sport and recreation provision.

PPG 17 makes it clear that that the government is of the view that in order to acheive its long term outcomes, local planning authorities must first undertake local assessments of need and audits of local provision.

Sport England supports this and believe that to ensure effective planning for sport and recreation occurs, local authorities role encompasses preparing robust assessments of the existing and future needs of their communites for sport and recreation facilites.

In order to help local authorities to undertake these assessments Sport England have developed a suite of strategic planning tools which could be used to help assess demand and provision; these being:

Expand Active Places Power

An online database of sports facilities available to local authorities, Central Government Departments, NDGB and Regional Bodies, allowing the user to plan more strategically for sport by using a number of tools. The following core facility types are covered by the initiative:

• Sport Halls·
• Swimming Pools·
• Synthetic Turf Pitches·
• Indoor Bowls·Indoor
• Tennis·Athletics
• Tracks·Playing Fields (including Natural Turf Pitches)·
• Health and Fitness·
• Golf Courses

Active Places allows local authorities to "benchmark2 the sports provision in their areas against other local authorities within the same ONS "family cluster".  Through Active Places it will also be possible to use thematic maps to examine provision against a wide variety of Census variables, and carry out simple supply and demand analysis e.g. population within catchments.

Access Active Places Power

Expand Facilities planning model

A strategic modelling tool used to estimate the level of demand for sports facilities within the local population, comparing this with the supply of facilities within a given local area. Taking account of the size and location of the facilities, the model highlights any inadequacies in facility provision.

The technique can also be used to model ‘what if’ scenarios, for instance, the impact of increases in population, the closure of individual facilities, and the opening of new facilities.

More information on the Facilities Planning Model

Expand Sports Facility Calculator

An interactive tool which estimates the demand for major community sports facilities. The population profiles can be chosen from an existing local authority population or built from scratch to allow the impact of major new residential developments to be assessed. The estimator uses the demand parameters established through the Facilities Planning Model.  

Assumptions on community participation of sports facilities are derived from data from the Benchmarking service, the National Halls and Pools Survey and General Household Survey. The estimator also allows the user to introduce percentage changes in demand to represent the effects of sports development initiatives.  The facilities covered by the Estimator include:·

• Swimming Pools
• Sports Halls
• Indoor Bowls Centres

(Indoor Tennis Centres & Synthetic Turf Pitches – will be added in the future)

Access the calculator here

Expand Playing Pitch Model

The Playing Pitch Model (PPM) and is an Excel spreadsheet containing six tabulated sheets. Basic information is entered into the spreadsheet, from which team generation rates and number of teams (now and in the future) can be automatically provided.

Guidance on how to use the calculator is provided on the Sport England website, as is the calculator itself.Local authorities are urged to adopt the revised methodology, to enable cross-border comparisons to be undertaken, to assist with benchmarking (see below) and to provide an easily understood approach which can be adopted in the planning system. This last aspect can be particularly important when dealing with planning appeals involving the potential loss of playing pitches.

Download the Playing Pitch Model

Expand National Benchmarking Service

An essential part of the strategic planning process is the measurement of performance, in order to determine how well a strategy has achieved its intended goals.  The aim of the National Benchmarking Service for sports halls and pools is to provide local authorities with rigorous and robust information on the performance of their sports halls and swimming pools, compared with that of equivalent ‘family’ facilities in similar locations elsewhere in the country.

Users of the service receive a performance report for each relevant facility, based upon specific information, including user surveys, details of facility programming, and financial returns. Reports on each facility comprise:·a contextual introduction;·the centre’s scores for all the performance indicators compared with 25%, 50% and 75% benchmark scores for centres nationally. These benchmarks are selected to represent similar type and size of facility and a similar socio-economic profile of facility catchment area;·a 15 minute drive-time catchment area map for the centre; and·frequency distributions for all the questions in the user survey.

Access the National Benchmarking Service

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