Development Management Policies DPD

While reference to using Sport England's design guidance for informing the assessments of planning applications is welcomed it is considered that the reference to ancillary facilities not exceeding the minimum size in Sport England's current guidance is too prescriptive and not futureproof. Our guidance is guidance, not standards or regulations and is subject to change over time as individual sports change their requirements. Furthermore, there may be cases where the provision of larger than minimum sized facility is of benefit to the user/community and can meet the criteria in DM15. The last sentence should be deleted therefore.

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.