Comment

Representation ID: 19720

Received: 24/03/2021

Respondent: Sport England

Sport England does not have resource to check every site allocation.

Any site allocation that may contains a sport facility such as a playing field or swimming pool, etc. where these facilities will be lost, the allocation needs to be consistent with paragraph 97 of the NPPF.

Simply allocating a site for a non sporting use does not override the requirement to evidence whether any sport facility is surplus or needs to be replaced.

Bradford Council are completing a Playing Pitch Strategy, and this should be used as the evidence base to determine the impact of any allocation on playing fields.

Re built sport facilities, an Indoor Sport Facility Needs Assessment will be required to determine any impact that an allocation may have on a built sport facility.

Impact that allocations may have adjacent to existing sport facilities:

Any allocation that is directly adjacent to a sports ground such as cricket club needs to consider any issues in relation to ball strike. Various case law examples are provided.

Ball stop mitigation needs to be provided as part of an allocation.

This principle also applies to issues such as noise being generated by an existing sports facility whereby the allocation needs to provide suitable noise attenuation mitigation.