Sport England’s funding programme, Protecting Playing
Fields (
PPF
) is part
of our Places People Play Olympic legacy mass participation
programme and is investing £10 million of National
Lottery funding in community sports projects over three years from
2011-2014.
The programme is being delivered via five funding rounds with
around £2 million being awarded to projects in each round.
Confirmed dates for funding rounds are:
- Round 1 closed on 6 July 2011 and we made
conditional awards to 48 projects worth £2.1m
- Round 2 closed on 12 December 2011 and we
made conditional awards to 61 projects worth £2.6m
- Round 3 closed 09 July 2012 and we
made conditional awards to 54 projects worth £2.4m
- Round 4 closed on 18 February 2013 and
decisions will be made May 2013
- Round 5 will open on 10 June 2013 and close on 05
August 2013.
Delivering a mass participation legacy for sport from the 2012
Olympic and Paralympic Games is a top priority for the Government
and Sport England.
To help us achieve this,
PPF
will focus on protecting and
improving playing fields and developing community sport.
Through this programme, we intend to fund up to 300 projects for
playing field improvements that will contribute to both retaining
and increasing participants in sport across England at the local
level.
The programme will fund capital projects that create, develop
and improve playing fields for sporting and community use and offer
long term protection of the site for sport.
Projects are likely to involve the construction of new natural
turf pitches or improvement of existing ones that need leveling or
drainage works.
Advice and guidance
These webpages contain all the information and guidance you need
to find out more about Protecting Playing Fields including how to
apply, how your application will be assessed and what we're looking
for.
If you prefer you can download the same information as a
prospectus
and FAQs
document.
The aims of Protecting Playing Fields
We believe that the improvement and protection of playing fields
will help retain participants and achieve sustainable increases in
participation.
Successful projects will be those where organisations can
demonstrate future management, maintenance and sporting use at the
site along with the site being protected for 25 years or
longer.
This means that organisations must own (or intend to own) the
freehold or have a lease for the field for that length of time.
Projects which can offer protection of playing fields “in
perpetuity” are likely to be further prioritised and will
be put forward to Fields in Trust for dedication as a Queen
Elizabeth II Field.
We are also particularly keen to improve and protect playing
fields in community ownership. As such we will also look to provide
further support to those where ownership of playing fields sites
are being transferred to the community from public ownership.
Why protect playing fields?
Playing fields are one of the most important resources for sport
in England.
Indeed, there are over 59,200 playing pitches at 29,236 sites in
England and over half of these grass pitches (33,200 or 56%) are
marked out for football. 1
They provide the valuable space required to maintain and enhance
opportunities for people to participate in both formal team sports
and other more informal activities.
Along with sporting benefits, good quality accessible playing
fields can also contribute to healthy and active communities and
secure wider reaching benefits.
Sport England’s statutory role
We believe that the best way to protect and enhance playing
fields is for all local authorities to have a robust and up to date
Playing Pitch Strategy (
PPS
) in place for their area,
backed by appropriate management and maintenance arrangements.
An up-to-date Playing Pitch Strategy or local needs
assessment is a key requirement upon which applications need
to be based.
Sport England has been a statutory consultee on planning
applications affecting playing field land since 1996. On average we
receive around 1,300 planning application consultations a year,
although this figure has risen over the last couple of years.
Fields in Trust Queen Elizabeth II Playing Fields
Challenge
2012 has been an exciting year with two great events
- Her Majesty The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London 2012
Olympics.
The Queen Elizabeth II Fields, headed by its patron Prince
William, is a programme which seeks to protect 2,012 outdoor
recreational spaces in communities all across the UK as a permanent
living legacy of these landmark occasions.
Sport England has entered into a partnership with Fields in
Trust (
FIT
) to support the
protection of playing fields as part of the Queen Elizabeth II
Fields.
Successful applicants to the PPF programme who accept a Deed of
Dedication of their playing field in perpetuity will have
their project details passed to
FIT
to undertake the registration and
branding of the project as Queen Elizabeth II Field.
1 Active Places database January 2011