When was the last time you saw a news article telling you that some houses were being knocked down to build a sports field? Or that a brown field site was being redeveloped into a pitch? A car park dug up to make space for a sports ground?
What about vice versa? Thought so.
This month marks the end of the government’s consultation on Sport England being stripped of its role as a statutory consultee on any development that would impact a sports playing field. The body currently processes around 1,200 applications a year and, with their guidance and expertise, 94% of concluded applications each year result in improved or no loss in provision.
The government consultation talks about a ‘bureaucratic burden’ placed on developments and outlines plans to streamline the planning processes. This, I fear, sounds to me like a higher percentage of those 1,200 applications will, in future, be successful – and will probably encourage a lot more applications.
Removal is a blunt instrument and the idea that public consultation and local planners will replace the specialist knowledge of the existing Sport England team will be patchy and area-dependent. Guess where people will spend time and effort campaigning to protect community assets and guess where housing and immediate resources will be wanted by communities?
I’d urge everybody to respond to the consultation and think about the opportunities that we have been afforded by playing fields in our lives. I urge everyone to ask themselves whether they really want to remove the perceived ‘bureaucratic burden’ that is there to protect them.