LEISURE, Lifestyle and libraries provider LiveWire is to carry out a major review of sports pitches across Warrington.
They have been commissioned by the borough council to asses the current number of pitches, their quality and the demand from local sports clubs that use them.
The review will allow LiveWire and the council to ensure there is a good supply of high quality pitches and playing fields to meet the needs of local sporting communities.
In order to complete the review, LiveWire needs local sports clubs to complete a short online survey to give their feedback on the current facilities. The survey is open to all football, cricket, hockey and rugby clubs in the town.
The results of the survey will be used to identify any work required to improve the quality of the grass pitches and associated facilities such as changing rooms and car parking.
A strategy will then be developed to inform decision making for planning applications and support funding applications to national governing bodies for sports including the Football Association and Rugby Football League.
Cllr Tony Higgins, the borough council’s lead member for culture, leisure and community, said: “Warrington has always been an active, sporty town with thriving local clubs and we hope it always will be. I would urge clubs to fill in this survey as it may make a real difference to the
provision of facilities in Warrington.”
The review comes after LiveWire was awarded more than £300,000 by the Premier League and FA Facilities Fund earlier this year to install a state-of-the-art 3G artificial grass pitch as part of the Great Sankey Neighbourhood Hub development.
Keith Maddock, neighbourhood wellbeing director at LiveWire, said: “We understand how important it is for local sports clubs to have the correct facilities to support their development and this review will allow us to determine if the current provision of sports playing pitches in Warrington is adequate to support the clubs that access the facilities regularly.”
All sports clubs that complete the survey before June 17 will be entered into a prize draw to receive £500 to use towards club development.
To fill in the survey, find the relevant sport below:
Cricket clubs: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WBCPPSCricketClubSurvey
Hockey clubs: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WBCPPSHockeyClubSurvey
Football clubs: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WBCPPSFootballClubSurvey
Rugby league clubs: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WBCPPSRFLClubSurvey
Rugby union clubs: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WBCPPSRFUClubSurvey
Sports pitches at Orford Park
Major review of town’s sports pitches
55 Comments
5 Comments
What about Running and Athletic Clubs they do exist you know?
Is there more to this seemingly beneficial audit than meets the eye?
Great that they are hoping to invest money in sports pitches but cynical me can’t help but wonder what will happen if some pitches and playing fields are shown to get very little use or none at all by actual clubs. Will they then be earmarked for selling off perhaps even for housing developments or just remain as they as members of the public probably use them all too. Probably just me reading more into it that is meant though.
The problem is the council do not maintain them properly, week in week out I turn up as a referee to these parks pitches, markings almost to none existant, grass cutting still left on the pitches, drainage shambolic, they take over £500 per season off football teams & they are used Sat/Sun so that is a £1000 x how many pitches there are that is alot of money for very little in return.
The same problem occurred with council owned residential garage and parking sites. WBC collected the rents – after a fashion – carried no maintenance, and because of that collected collected less in in rent, as time went on, until WBC decided the much needed off street residential parking were ‘uneconomical’. Little council thought was given over to its own mismanagement contribution making the sites uneconomical, it never is and never will be until they start to address their own obvious shortcomings. I hope the football/sports fields don’t end up like the mismanaged garage/ parking sites. They were sold off for short term gain.