Grassroots football facilities are being improved in six areas of Nottinghamshire as part of a government levelling up pledge to ensure all families live within 15 minutes of a football pitch.
A year ago, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised that the Government’s levelling up agenda would deliver enough new facilities to ensure “you are never more than 15 minutes away from a high-quality football pitch”.
That promise was made despite data from the Department for Education which shows, as of July 2021, 236 playing fields have been sold off since the Conservative government entered office in 2010.
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That includes at least three fields in Nottinghamshire, while a further nine sales have been agreed across the country so far this year.
But funding has been approved for a total of 116 projects across England which have received cash as part of the levelling up agenda, at a total cost of £39 million.
Six of these grassroots facilities are in Nottinghamshire after the county was allocated just under £600,000 in funding. However, none of the projects are in “category one” areas - which are among the most deprived in the country. Instead, all six projects in our area will be built in more affluent category two and three boroughs.
They include a new sports hub at the Costock Road Playing Field site, on the outskirts of East Leake, South Nottinghamshire. It comes as the Government confirmed a further £230 million uplift for football facilities in the UK by 2025, £168 million of which will be invested within England.
The Government claims at least half of the investment is going directly to the nation’s most deprived areas, to build on the successful delivery of more than £43 million across the UK last year.
A breakdown of projects approved for funding shows that around £29 million is being invested in the most deprived category one areas, while around £15m is being poured into the wealthiest category three areas. More than £7 million is going to category two areas.
The biggest single investment, of £6.1 million, has been approved for a project to build a new sports hub including three full-sized floodlit 3G football pitches at Parsloes Park in Barking, Essex, a category one area. That covers more than half of the total £10.3 million cost of the project.
In fact, the five areas to receive the highest in funding are all in Labour-run category one areas. The funding is part of the £50 million pledge announced by Boris Johnson in 2021 to build 185 new 3G artificial pitches, improve 5,000 existing grass pitches and create nine ‘hub’ sites with multiple pitches.
At the time, Mr Johnson said the investment would ensure “you are never more than 15 minutes away from a high-quality football pitch”. Since 2021, there have been 43 new 3G pitches built using this funding, though many of these were on existing football sites and replaced grass or older artificial surfaces.
The remainder of the 116 grassroots facilities to receive funding in the past year mainly included projects such as rebuilding or refurbishing changing facilities, floodlights, or redevelopment of existing 3G pitches.
But despite the wave of investment, data from the Department for Education shows that as of July 2021, 236 playing fields have been sold off since the Conservative government entered office in 2010, with a further nine already sold in 2023 alone.
The DfE argues there are ‘very strict controls’ on the sale of school playing fields, and that land sold is often ‘surplus and unused’. It added that it is not the government or the DfE that instigates sell-offs, and that schools must consult, with sales only approved “if the sports and curriculum needs of the school and its neighbouring schools can continue to be met”.
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