DM15 Playing Pitches and Other Leisure and Recreational Activities - Preferred Option

If the policy is to use the Playing Pitch Strategy SPD for informing the acceptability of proposals it is important that it is kept up-to-date. Sport England expects playing pitch strategies to be reviewed every 3 years to keep up-to-date unless monitoring of supply/demand takes place on an annual basis. As there has been an 8 year gap between the Council's original 2002 PPS and the emerging 2010 PPS this is of potential concern. This has been exemplified locally by the recent planning application for the Rayleigh Boys Youth Football Club pitches which proposed additional pitches to meet current deficiencies in Rayleigh although the 2002 PPS did not show a deficiency in this area. To provide more flexibility, it is requested that criterion (i) be amended to allow applicants to be able to satisfactorily demonstrate that there is a deficit in supply in the area where they propose new playing fields to address the potential scenario that the areas of deficit identified in the PPS are no longer up-to-date. Without this, the policy will not be flexible enough to address changing circumstances if the PPS is not kept up-to-date.