- 15 projects in the East to receive Sport England facility funding
- 149 sports facilities across England get Lottery funding go ahead
- News comes as major funding milestone reached and projects celebrated
The funding will help those schemes to either breathe new life into tired facilities, make them more efficient and sustainable, or improve existing and unused sites so that they offer better sporting experiences for people.
Projects in the East of England include:
- The Voyager Academy, a secondary school in Peterborough, has been awarded £269,000 to develop a new full size floodlit third generation artificial grass pitch.
- Huntingdonshire District Council will spend £274,400 to replace an existing sand dressed full size artificial grass pitch with a third generation surface at The One Leisure Synthetic Pitch at St Neots.
- St. Ives Rugby Union Football Club will use £65,000 to improve drainage on its pitch.
- Hingham Playing Fields Association will use £75,000 to build new tennis courts over a currently dilapidated, unusable, outdoor space. The funding will pay for court resurfacing, fencing around the facility and redesigned floodlights.
- Bedford Athletic Rugby Club has been awarded £50,818 to renovate and improve its three grass pitches. The improvements are needed if the club is to continue hosting its own teams and other local clubs, as well as youth and women’s rugby.
- Bishop's Stortford Hockey Club will receive £500,000 to develop a full-sized, sand-dressed artificial grass pitch with a half-pitch sized junior training area.
A complete list of the funded projects is available here: https://sportengland.sharefile.com/d-s68ba6f27b3a4876b
The announcement comes as Sport England revealed that it has reached a major funding milestone – having invested £5 billion in grassroots sport in the last 20 years.
Since 1994, the year Tom Daley was born, Wet Wet Wet topped the charts with Love Is All Around and the Channel Tunnel opened, Sport England has made tens of thousands of investments – totalling £5 billion.
Sport England’s Property Director, Charles Johnston, said: “£5 billion is a huge sum of money, but it’s the projects and people that that money supports which are really important. We’re delighted to have invested so much into community sport, and see on a daily basis the impact that it makes for local people.
“The latest round of facility funding continues to make a noticeable difference to community sports clubs across the country. By giving people top-class, sustainable facilities in which to play sport, and by improving and protecting our playing surfaces, we’re ensuring that more people can pay sport, more often.”
A total of 149 projects across England have been awarded new funding today, totalling £16.5 million of National Lottery money. This will help to create new changing rooms, pavilions and artificial grass pitches as well as protecting and improving grass pitches to make people's sporting experiences better.
Sport England
Sport England is focused on helping people and communities across the country create a sporting habit for life. We will invest over £1 billion of National Lottery and Exchequer funding between 2012 and 2017 in organisations and projects that will:
- Help more people have a sporting habit for life
- Create more opportunities for young people to play sport
- Nurture and develop talent
- Provide the right facilities in the right places
- Support local authorities and unlock local funding
- Ensure real opportunities for communities.
The National Lottery has been changing lives for 20 years. Every week National Lottery players raise over £30 million to help change people's lives across the UK.
*******
For more information please contact the press office: Andrew St Ledger on 020 7273 1800 or [email protected]; Amy Wright on 0207 273 1593 or [email protected]