Written evidence submitted by the Football Association [PKS 397]
Communities and Local Government Committee - Public parks inquiry
Football is an accessible, inclusive sport, with comparatively low participation costs, which is played by a wide range of people irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, disability or social background. This is why more than eight million adults in England play football - making the game the nation’s most popular team sport.
The FA is the national governing body of football in England. One of The FA’s key responsibilities is to nurture and support the grassroots game. The FA welcomes the opportunity to respond to the inquiry as a large amount of football played in England is played in parks and on publicly owned facilities.
This submission outlines football’s reliance on publicly owned facilities, including parks, the problems this poses and how The FA is working with partners to modernise football facilities in England so that grassroots football continues to thrive.
Football’s reliance on publicly owned facilities
From a grassroots football perspective, public parks play an important role in the provision of football facilities in England. Of the approximately 30,000 grass football pitches in England, it is estimated that 83 per cent are both publicly owned and managed facilities with 52 per cent of the total number within the education sector and 31 per cent Local Authority owned and run, many of these in parks.
In recent years budget cuts have forced the vast majority of Local Authorities to reduce their discretionary spending with further budget cuts expected. As sport and leisure are discretionary services they are very susceptible to these budget cuts meaning many publicly owned pitches are either less well maintained or much more expensive, with an obvious impact on the cost and attractiveness of hiring Local Authority pitches. Research by The FA’s Insight team has found that poor facilities have the biggest impact on boys and girls enjoyment of football.
The FA Chairman’s England Commission diagnosed a “crisis” in grassroots football facilities
In 2014 The FA Chairman’s England Commission published two reports which looked at improving the chances of young English talent succeeding at the highest levels of the game. The reports described a “crisis” in grassroots football facilities in England, partly due to reduced Local Authority Budgets, and called for urgent action to address the problem. The
Commission discovered one Local Authority which was considering increasing its adult pitch fees by 125 per cent and its junior pitch fees by 320 per cent. The commission found many more examples of similar approaches being prepared by authorities as the impact of budget cuts continued to drive reductions in discretionary expenditure.
Many public pitches have suffered from a gradual erosion in maintenance spend over the years and are suffering from the compounded impact of reduced maintenance, poor weather and over-play. It is estimated that, on average, it costs £11,700 per year to properly maintain a grass pitch for good quality football and training. Yet, due to falling funding, Local Authorities currently spend around £2,000 per pitch per year on maintenance. The impact on pitch usability is evident. In addition to frequent postponement of games, the consistency and quality of training for future generations of young footballers is severely hampered.
As part of a survey carried out recently in one major core city, 21 per cent of players reported that pitch quality has declined significantly within the past three years with causes being cited as over-play, poor drainage, inadequate on-going maintenance and reduced frequency of grass cutting. In another major urban authority, a recent playing pitch strategy has reported that over 70 per cent of facilities are rated as “average” through to “unacceptable” by users.
A growing number of Local Authorities, especially those in areas of high population density, have indicated to The FA that within one or two years, there may be no subsidy available for football at all. This would essentially mean that all costs would be passed onto participants so they would be asked to pay more for poorer facilities. As a consequence, many local authorities are now “looking to football” for leadership on how to develop new models of delivering grassroots facilities in a financially sustainable way.
How have the football authorities addressed these problems?
For more than a decade The FA and Premier League have invested in grassroots football facilities via the Football Foundation which also receives funding from Government (via Sport England). This funding supports the development of new or refurbished local football facilities and since 2000 over £800 million has been invested to improve facility infrastructure across grassroots football.
Much of this investment has gone towards Third Generation (3G) artificial pitches which are much more durable than traditional grass pitches. Floodlit 3G pitches are capable of delivering more than 70 hours use per week in most weather conditions whereas a grass pitch can only be used for a maximum of four to five hours per week and in the winter months matches on grass surfaces are vulnerable to cancellation due to frozen surfaces or waterlogging.
Despite this investment, The FA Chairman’s Commission found that more is needed to be done to reverse the decline in the quality and availability of grassroots football pitches in England.
Working alongside Local Authorities
Only a third of local authorities have up to date playing pitch strategies in place, with a further 30% currently developing updated studies – these are critical baselines for the development of local plans and The FA will continue to support local authorities to develop comprehensive playing pitch strategies.
The FA, Premier League and Sport England are also working towards a coordinated approach to investment that will improve the number and quality of grassroots facilities. ‘Local Plans for Football’ will underpin investment decisions on a city or Local Authority area basis. The Local Plan will identify facility needs across the different football environments – including local parks, 3G artificial turf pitches, grass pitch improvements, changing rooms and clubhouses, multi-use games areas, hub sites, indoor halls, education and classroom facilities and other recreational environments – identifying the needs of all stakeholders, including formal and informal players and participants. These Local Plans will identify investment priorities and will see a reduction in the number of pitches required for traditional 11v11 football, in order to enable a more diverse range of football opportunities, such as small-sided and informal games. These in turn will require less maintenance, meaning Local Authorities will be required to spend less money maintaining facilities.
To support value for money and consistent quality of delivery, the partners will be developing a toolkit of supporting information, covering:
Local Authorities and local partners will be required to develop insight and customer understanding so they can identify the change they want to effect and outcomes to be achieved – this will be articulated as part of the Local Plan but may require early assessment to understand additional insight required, that can be gathered alongside or prior to the playing pitch strategy preparation.
Projects aimed at securing accessibility for community and recreational football and using the power of football to address deprivation issues will be identified but sustainability, in the context of reduced Local Authority budgets, will be a core theme of future investment, with an area wide approach to using surpluses to support a coordinated network of facilities. Consideration will also be given to the most appropriate way of ensuring sinking funds are set aside and protected for future refurbishment, including local or national retention options.
On a similar basis, investment in site specific maintenance equipment and supporting maintenance equipment banks with a shared approach to delivery and improving pitch quality are likely to form part of local planning and will help Local Authorities to address the budget cuts and find alternative ways to maintain pitches and informal spaces.
A new generation of grassroots football facilities: the “Parklife Football Hubs Programme”
The FA Chairman’s England Commission sought to find a way to reduce football’s reliance on local authority subsidies, build significantly more Artificial Grass Pitches (AGPs) and build a sustainable model to make this change happen.
The FA’s solution is a radical new approach to the provision of grassroots football facilities known as “Parklife” which is currently inviting expressions of interest from Local Authorities. The programme will see football hubs centred on new, high quality AGPs, in the first instance focused on up to thirty English cities. The FA, working with the relevant local authority, will assess the demand in those cities for football facilities and work out how to meet that demand by building football hubs, creating an area wide solution rather than a one-off site investment. These hubs will be owned and managed by a new local football trust whose membership could include the Local Authority, the County FA and the local professional football clubs amongst others. The new revenues generated by the AGPs will help to cross-subsidise an improvement in grass pitches and other facilities as well as funding a sinking fund for ongoing maintenance and future capital investment.
The model requires a financial contribution from the relevant Local Authority alongside funding from The FA and Government as well as other partners. Government has already committed £8 million a year over the next five years to Parklife and The FA has pledged £10 million a year.
Based on the success of a pilot in Sheffield the programme has already launched in London where it is being supported through additional investment from the Mayor of London. The FA will soon be inviting expressions of interest in Parklife from other cities across the country. By 2020 our ambition is to have increased the number of AGPs in England by 50 per cent, bringing the total to over 1,000 as well as to have improved in excess of 2,000 natural turf pitches.