We were appointed in early summer to carry out a playing pitch assessment for Waverley Borough Council in Surrey. This was linked to the development of their local Core Strategy and is intended to set local standards for provision and guide their calculation of Planning Infrastructure Charges. As ever, we followed Sport England’s guidance “Towards…
Tony has had a memorable couple of weeks working as a volunteer at the London 2012 Olympic Games. A gamesmaker. He’s been driving round London enjoying the freedom of the Olympic lanes to ferry members of the Olympic Family to various destinations around the capital. Overseas visitors have been highly complimentary about the Games and…
We’ve been very busy in recent weeks working on a number of playing field assessments. One of these was at Epping Forest district in south east Essex, notable for including a number of Olympic training venues. One of these was at Old Loughtonians Hockey Club where they had installed two, new, water-based hockey pitches of…
Biddenham International School and Sports College We are assisting the college and its partner Queen’s Park Youth Cricket to develop a funding application to Sport England under its ‘Inspired Facilities’ programme and the England and Wales Cricket Board, for a new pavilion for use by the college and club. The College draws most of its students…
We have just completed a piece of work for Lambeth’s Sports and Recreation Unit advising on the future of their playing pitch booking service. We were asked to make recommendations for improving customer access to outdoor sports and pitch bookings especially in the field of on-line access. As customers we are very used to buying…
In 2009, we undertook a needs analysis in connection with the proposed redevelopment of a company sports ground in Alton in Hampshire, to establish what new provision should be made to mitigate the loss of the pitches. We recently undertook an updated assessment to examine changes in supply and demand since the original study, to…
Land Securities: Land Securities is seeking to develop a viable mixed-use scheme involving the creation of new housing, employment opportunities, shops and open space at Harrow View, formerly the the Kodak site in Harrow, North West London. Because the development will involve the loss of playing pitches from Kodak’s former Sports and Social Club, we…
In another collaboration with CB Richard Ellis, we produced a needs analysis of playing pitch provision as part of another mixed-use development on a former industrial site in Little Heath in Coventry. The work involved examining the impact of the loss of three disused football pitches and devising a scheme involving the provision of junior…
We are working with our friends from The Landscape Partnership to produce an Open Space, Sport and Recreation Strategy for Uttlesford District Council in North Essex. The district is quite large, including areas as diverse as the historic town of Saffron Walden, Stansted Airport and a host of attractive villages, one of which goes by…
In late July Jim Lynch appeared on BBC London TV’s Olympic Debate programme challenging Sebastian Coe on the proportion of tickets for the major events going to corporate sponsors rather than the general public. The British taxpayer is forking out some £9.2 billion compared with the corporate sponsors’ £0.7 billion yet for the big ticket…