Sport England improves more facilities in the South West with over £1m of Lottery investment
Four artificial grass pitches and swimming pool changing rooms in the South West are set to be overhauled thanks to nearly £1 million of National Lottery funding from Sport England.
With three quarters of people citing the quality of the pitch surface and the changing rooms as being important to their sporting experience, Sport England’s new Improvement Fund is investing £1,293,302 million to improve these facilities for the benefit of thousands of people.
Sport England Property Director, Charles Johnston, said: “As the research shows people have a better experience of sport when the facilities are good both on and off the pitch. These investments in artificial grass pitches and swimming pool changing rooms will have a big impact on sport in local communities.”
Successful bidders to the fund include Taunton Deane Borough Council, which has been awarded £497,802 of funding to transform the changing rooms at Station Road pool. The work is part of the council’s £1.2 million scheme that will see the 1970s baths transformed, with cleaner and greener operating equipment, modern changing rooms and vastly improved facilities for disabled people.
Cllr Catherine Herbert, who holds the Sports, Parks and Leisure portfolio, said: “This is just fantastic news and I hope that the people of Taunton Deane will really celebrate this wonderful opportunity to have one of the most modern public swimming pools in Somerset.
“This is a huge project that will really benefit the community and I hope, once the upgrade is complete, that we will be able to attract even more swimmers and enable more people to get active more often.
“I would like to thank Sport England for the award and Tone Leisure for its support in helping us make such a strong case.”
Other projects awarded between £150,000 and £500,000 include:
Beaufont Community School in Gloucestershire has received £219,000 to refurbish the school’s dilapidated swimming pool changing facilities. The pool is open for community use and plays a key role in providing affordable leisure facilities for the local area.
Wootton Bassett Sports Association has been awarded £300,000 to build a full-sized artificial grass pitch at Gerard Buxton Sports Hub as part of a new multi-sport facility. The project will allow the Association and its members to move from their current constrained home.
Oasis Waterpark Limited has received £276,500 to refurbish the dilapidated changing facilities at the Oasis Leisure Centre in Swindon.
Minister for Sport, Hugh Robertson, said: “Protecting and improving local sport facilities is an important part of the legacy from 2012. This National Lottery Improvement Fund will create thousands more sporting opportunities for communities across the country encouraging people to get active and take up sport.”
Between now and 2017, Sport England will invest £45 million of lottery funding through the Improvement Fund into medium-sized projects to improve grassroots sport facilities. Changing rooms and artificial grass pitches were chosen for the first round after they were identified by Sport England as improvements that could have an immediate impact on the number of people playing sport within a community.
