The First Step
So here you are, a voluntary or community organisation in need of a sports ground, or a hall or another kind of sports facility, or with ideas about how an existing facility could be better used. What do you do first? The first stage is to get general agreement within your organisation that this type of development is worth exploring further. The second is to decide what it is that you want or need.
Planning your sports facility
The first step in planning your sports facility is to work out what is needed locally – where the gaps are in local sports services and activities or where existing facilities could be better used.
You need to decide what the new sports facility needs to include – eg the size of the grounds, the number of changing rooms, etc. It is best to do this in two stages – agreeing the absolute minimum needed then adding a ‘wish list’ of those desirable elements which would be good but are not essential.
Both the essential and the wish list elements of the plan need to take account of what the likely level of use will be and what the organisation can handle. For example, the wish list number of football pitches might be 10 but there may not be enough local teams to fill these pitches each week or the organisation might not have enough capacity to cope with organising 10 matches at the same time.
Complete the Ideal Facility Planner on the next page with what you want from your new sports facility. As you go through the process, ideas about your specific requirements might change, particularly when you are faced with the costs of some of your ideas! However, putting your ideas down from the outset will give you something to work from.
Already using a sports facility?
Perhaps you already use the facility that you want to own and/or manage. Your organisation may already be making very good use of a facility owned by the local Council or other public sector organisation. Negotiating a long-term lease or purchasing the freehold can pave the way for your organisation to raise funds for development. If this is your situation, go straight to the ‘Organisational Capacity’ section to assess if this is something your organisation could do.