Facility Plan and Usage Schedule for Australian Sports Clubs

A netball club turns up to training on Tuesday night and finds the cricket club has booked the pavilion for a presentation evening. Nobody told them. Nobody checked a schedule - because there isn't one. The netballers train on the car park under floodlights that weren't designed for sport, two parents leave angry Facebook comments, and the committee spends the rest of the week apologising to everyone.

Or worse: a football club's lease renewal comes up for review and council asks for evidence that the facility is being used in line with the lease agreement. The club can't produce anything. No usage records, no maintenance log, no plan. The renewal gets delayed. The club panics. The local paper runs a story about it.

These aren't hypotheticals. They happen every season, across every code, in every state. And they're almost always preventable - with a facility plan and a usage schedule that someone actually maintains.

How most Australian clubs access their facilities

Before we get into the planning, it helps to understand the landscape. The way your club accesses its ground shapes everything about your obligations and your bargaining position.

Council lease. The most common arrangement by far. Your club leases a facility - oval, courts, clubrooms - from local government. Leases typically run 5 to 21 years. The lease specifies what you can and can't do, who maintains what, and under what conditions it can be terminated. If you haven't read yours recently, read it this week.

Licensed use. A step down from a lease. You have permission to use the facility at specified times, but less security of tenure. Councils can reallocate licensed-use facilities more easily. If you're on a licence rather than a lease, upgrading should be on your committee's agenda.

Shared-use agreements. Multiple codes sharing a single facility - cricket and football on the same oval is the classic. These agreements should specify who gets priority when, how shared spaces are managed, and who pays for what. In practice, many are informal. That's where fights start.

School-use agreements. Some clubs train or play on school grounds. These can be fragile - a new principal can change the terms overnight. Document everything.

Club-owned facilities. Rare in community sport. Some older clubs - particularly in regional areas - own their grounds. Ownership gives you control but also gives you every maintenance bill.

Most clubs reading this will fall into the council lease category. The rest of this article is written with that in mind, but the principles apply regardless.

Why you need a facility plan

A facility plan is not a wish list. It's a document that records what you have, the condition it's in, who's responsible for maintaining it, and what you'd like to improve over time. It matters for five reasons.

It protects your access. When your lease comes up for renewal, council will look at whether you've been a responsible tenant. A facility plan with maintenance records and usage data is the strongest evidence you can provide.

It strengthens grant applications. Every state and federal sport infrastructure grant asks some version of the same question: what's your plan for this facility? Grant assessors aren't just evaluating the project - they're evaluating whether you can manage it once it's built.

It provides a basis for upgrades. You can't ask council for new lighting if you can't demonstrate the current lighting is inadequate and that you've maintained it as well as you reasonably could. The facility plan is where that evidence lives.

It prevents sharing conflicts. When three codes share a ground and everyone assumes they have priority on Saturday afternoon, the only thing that resolves it is a written schedule everyone agreed to before the season started. Retrospective negotiation is always ugly.

It demonstrates responsibility to council. Councils manage hundreds of community facilities. The clubs that come to them with a plan, with evidence of maintenance, with a clear picture of usage - those are the clubs that get their calls returned. That's not cynical. That's how resource-constrained organisations work.

The facility audit: what do you actually have?

The first step in any facility plan is an audit. Walk the site. Document everything. Take photos. Rate the condition. Note who's responsible for maintenance - you or council.

Cover everything: playing surface, change rooms, canteen/kitchen, storage, car park, fencing, lighting, scoreboard, PA system, toilets. For each item, record three things: current condition (good, fair, poor), who is responsible for maintaining it (club or council), and any urgent issues that need attention now rather than next year.

This audit becomes the baseline. Update it annually. It takes one committee member half a day - a small investment for the document that underpins your entire facility relationship with council.

The usage schedule

A usage schedule is exactly what it sounds like: a document showing who uses the facility, when, where, and for what purpose. It sounds obvious. Most clubs don't have one.

Here's a basic template structure:

| Day | Time | Area | User | Purpose | |-----|------|------|------|---------| | Monday | 4:00–5:30pm | Main oval | Junior football (U12s) | Training | | Monday | 5:30–7:00pm | Main oval | Senior football | Training | | Monday | 4:00–6:00pm | Courts | Netball club | Training | | Tuesday | 6:00–8:00pm | Clubrooms | Committee | Meeting (monthly) | | Wednesday | 4:00–5:30pm | Main oval | Junior football (U14s) | Training | | Wednesday | 5:30–7:00pm | Main oval | Senior football | Training | | Thursday | 4:00–6:00pm | Courts | Netball club | Training | | Saturday | 8:00am–5:00pm | Main oval | Football club | Match day | | Saturday | 8:00am–1:00pm | Courts | Netball club | Match day | | Sunday | 9:00am–12:00pm | Main oval | Local school | Casual hire |

Include every user: your club, co-tenant clubs, schools, casual hirers, council bookings. If someone uses the facility and they're not on this schedule, you've got a gap.

The schedule prevents double-bookings, gives council a clear picture of how intensively the facility is used, and helps you identify underutilised time slots that could generate casual hire revenue.

Update it every season. Circulate it to all users before the season starts. Get agreement in writing. "We've always trained on Tuesdays" is not an agreement - it's an assumption, and assumptions collapse the moment someone else makes the same one.

Maintenance planning

Your lease almost certainly specifies maintenance responsibilities. The split usually looks something like this:

Club responsibility: day-to-day cleaning, minor repairs, litter and waste management, canteen upkeep, storage management, reporting issues to council promptly.

Council responsibility: structural repairs, major works, compliance (accessibility upgrades, fire safety, asbestos management), playing surface renovation, major equipment replacement.

But if your lease was signed in 2008, the maintenance split might be vague - or it might not reflect what actually happens. Some clubs quietly take on tasks that are technically council's responsibility because it's faster than waiting. That's understandable, but if you're spending club money on council-owned assets without a documented agreement, you have no recourse when council refuses to reimburse you.

Get the split in writing. If it's in your lease, pull it out into a simple table your committee can reference. If it's ambiguous, ask council to clarify. A short email exchange now beats a heated argument about who was supposed to fix the hot water system.

Keep a maintenance log. Every repair, every issue reported to council - date, description, who did it, cost. This log is evidence of responsible tenancy, it supports grant applications, and it means the next committee doesn't have to guess what was done and when.

The facility improvement plan

This is the forward-looking part of your facility plan. What do you want to improve, in what order, and how will you pay for it?

Structure it simply:

1. Priority - rank each improvement by urgency and impact
2. Description - what's the work?
3. Estimated cost - get quotes where possible, rough estimates where not
4. Potential funding sources - council contribution, state government sport infrastructure grants, federal grants, club reserves, fundraising, sponsorship
5. Timeline - when would you realistically like this done?

An example:

• Priority 1: Upgrade floodlighting to training standard. Estimated cost: $85,000. Funding: 50% state sport infrastructure grant, 30% council, 20% club reserves. Timeline: before next winter season.
• Priority 2: Accessible toilet and change room upgrade. Estimated cost: $120,000. Funding: council accessibility program + federal community infrastructure grant. Timeline: 18 months.
• Priority 3: Solar panels on clubroom roof. Estimated cost: $15,000. Funding: club reserves + sustainability grant. Timeline: 2–3 years.

This is what you take to council when asking for support. It turns a vague request - "we need better facilities" - into a costed proposal they can action. Councils love this. It makes their job easier.

Australia-specific considerations

A few things that are specific to the Australian context and worth being aware of.

Crown land. Many community sport facilities sit on Crown land managed by council. Council is the land manager, not the owner - so some improvements require state government approval as well. If your facility is on Crown land, check whether proposed works trigger that extra layer.

Lease terms vary. There's no single standard. Some councils offer 21-year leases with renewal options. Others offer 5-year licences. Some run formal seasonal allocation processes where clubs apply annually - even if they've used the same ground for decades. Know your council's process and timeline.

Shared-use agreements. Where multiple codes share a facility, there should be a formal agreement covering priority, shared spaces, cost splits, and conflict resolution. If one doesn't exist - and for many shared facilities, it doesn't - it's worth initiating one through council.

Facility compliance. The Disability Discrimination Act applies to community sport facilities. So do fire safety requirements, food safety regulations (if you run a canteen), and workplace health and safety obligations - even though most people in the building are volunteers. Structural compliance is primarily council's responsibility, but clubs can be liable for operational failures. Know where the boundaries are.

Seasonal allocation. In many local government areas, summer and winter sports go through a formal allocation process. Cricket and football share an oval, with handover periods in March/April and September/October. If your council runs a formal allocation, engage early. Clubs that submit requirements on time with documentation get better outcomes than those that assume last year's arrangement carries over.

These arrangements vary significantly between states and even between councils within the same state. Always check with your specific council.

Further reading

Geoff Wilson covers facility management in detail in his book on running grassroots sports clubs. If you want a deeper treatment of the practical and political realities of managing shared community sport facilities - especially the council relationship - it's worth reading. We've reviewed the book here.

How TidyHQ helps

Your facility plan, lease agreement, usage schedule, and maintenance log all need to live somewhere the entire committee can access - not in the secretary's personal Dropbox or buried in a Gmail thread from 2019. TidyHQ's document storage gives your committee a single place for these files, with access controlled by role. When the committee turns over (and it will), the documents stay with the club.

For the usage schedule specifically, TidyHQ's event management tools let you build a booking calendar that all users can see. You can set up recurring bookings for training and match days, manage casual hire requests, and avoid the double-booking disasters that happen when scheduling lives in someone's head. It won't fix the politics of three codes sharing one oval - nothing will - but it gives everyone a single source of truth about who's booked where and when.

FAQs

Do we need a facility plan if we only have a short-term licence, not a lease? Yes - arguably more so. A short-term licence gives you less security of tenure, which means you need to work harder to demonstrate your value as a tenant. A facility plan shows council that you're organised, responsible, and invested in the long-term condition of the facility. That's exactly the kind of evidence that helps when you're negotiating for a longer-term arrangement. It also strengthens any grant applications, which some councils view favourably because it brings external funding into their facilities.

Who should be responsible for the facility plan on the committee? Ideally, assign a facilities officer or ground manager role. In practice, it often falls to the secretary or president. The important thing is that one person owns it, it gets reviewed annually, and it doesn't disappear when that person leaves the committee. Keep it in a shared location - not a personal hard drive.

Our council doesn't seem to care about facility plans. Is it still worth doing? Council staff change. Priorities shift. A new recreation officer might arrive next year who takes facility planning seriously and asks every tenant club for theirs. If you already have one, you're ahead. If you don't, you're scrambling. And even if council never asks for it, the plan still protects you - it's the basis for grant applications, maintenance budgeting, and resolving disputes with co-tenants. Do it for your own benefit, not just council's.

References

• Geoff Wilson - Leading a Grassroots Sports Club - Practical guide to club development including facility management, council relationships, and shared-use agreements
• Australian Sports Commission - Federal government agency providing resources on community sport infrastructure planning and facility standards
• GrantConnect - Australian Government grants database for searching infrastructure and facility funding opportunities
• Australian Sports Foundation - Tax-deductible donation platform for community sport facility projects
• Play by the Rules - Resources on governance, compliance, and safe facility standards for community sporting organisations
• Sport Integrity Australia - National body providing governance and operational standards including facility compliance guidance