Facility Plan and Usage Schedule for UK Sports Clubs

A cricket club arrives for their Saturday fixture to find the outfield has been cut to football length. The council's grounds team did it on Friday - nobody told the cricket club, nobody checked the booking calendar, and the square hasn't been prepared because the groundsman assumed it was a football weekend. The opening batsmen are standing on a pitch that's been mown at two inches with a set of football line markings still faintly visible at mid-off.

Or this: a football club's lease renewal is due. The council asks for evidence of facility usage, maintenance records, and a plan for the next five years. The club secretary rifles through three years of committee minutes, two former chairmen's personal email accounts, and a filing cabinet in the pavilion that hasn't been opened since 2019. They can't produce anything coherent. The renewal gets delayed. The club panics. Rumours start about the council selling the land for housing.

These aren't hypothetical scenarios. They happen every season, across every code, in every county. And they're almost always preventable - with a facility plan that someone actually maintains and a usage schedule that everyone agrees to before the season starts.

We've written the Australian version of this guide, and while the principles of facility management are similar, the UK context is different in important ways. Your relationship is with the local council, not a state government land manager. Fields in Trust protections exist here but not in Australia. Sport England's Playing Pitch Strategy shapes how councils allocate pitches. Section 106 developer contributions fund facility improvements in ways that have no Australian equivalent. This guide is written for those realities.

How most UK clubs access their facilities

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

Council-owned, club-leased. The most common arrangement. Your club holds a lease - typically 10 to 25 years - on a council-owned facility. 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. Seriously. Most committees have never seen the actual lease document.

Council pitch booking. A step down from a lease. Your club books pitches seasonally through the council's parks department. You have usage rights for specific times, but no security of tenure beyond the current booking period. The council can reallocate your pitch to another club or withdraw it for maintenance. If this is your arrangement, upgrading to a lease should be on your committee's agenda.

Shared-use agreements. Multiple codes sharing a single facility - cricket and football on the same ground is the classic English arrangement, with the season handover happening in April and September. These agreements should specify who gets priority when, how shared spaces like the pavilion are managed, and who pays for what. In practice, many are informal understandings that work until they don't.

Community Use Agreements with schools. Some clubs train or play on school grounds, particularly where a school has an artificial pitch or indoor hall. These agreements are typically formalised through a Community Use Agreement (CUA), often a condition of the school's planning permission or Sport England funding. They can be very good - but they're subject to the school's priorities, and a new headteacher can make life difficult. Document everything.

Club-owned facilities. Less common than in Australia, but some older clubs - particularly cricket and rugby clubs - own their grounds outright. Ownership gives you control and security but also gives you every maintenance bill, every compliance obligation, and every repair cost.

Private landlord. Some clubs lease from private landowners or estates. These arrangements vary enormously. Get proper legal advice on the lease terms.

Most clubs reading this will fall into the council lease or council booking categories. 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 for a new pavilion. 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 - or when the council reviews its pitch allocation - they'll look at whether you've been a responsible tenant. A facility plan with maintenance records and usage data is the strongest evidence you can put forward.

It strengthens grant applications. Every Sport England, Football Foundation, ECB, and National Lottery grant asks some version of the same question: what's your plan for this facility? Grant assessors aren't just evaluating the project you're proposing - they're evaluating whether you can manage it once it's built.

It gives you standing in the planning process. When a developer proposes building on or near your playing fields, the local authority considers objections more seriously when they come from a club with a documented facility plan, usage evidence, and a relationship with the council. A club with nothing on paper is easy to dismiss.

It prevents sharing conflicts. When cricket and football share a ground - and the footballers want pre-season friendlies on the square in March, and the cricketers want their outfield back in April - the only thing that resolves it without damage is a written schedule everyone agreed to before the season started.

It demonstrates responsibility to the council. Councils manage hundreds of community facilities with shrinking budgets. 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 stretched organisations make decisions.

Fields in Trust: protection you might not know you have

Fields in Trust is a charity that legally protects parks, playing fields, and green spaces across the UK. If your ground is registered with Fields in Trust - through a Deed of Dedication or a covenant - it has legal protection against sale or development. The land must remain in use as a recreational space.

This matters because council budget pressures are real, and playing fields have been sold for development across the country. Between 2000 and 2020, thousands of playing fields were lost. Fields in Trust protections don't make your ground untouchable, but they add a significant legal barrier that councils and developers have to navigate.

Check whether your ground is protected. You can search the Fields in Trust map or ask your council. If it isn't protected, and your club has concerns about the long-term security of the site, a conversation with Fields in Trust about dedication is worth having. It costs the club nothing and the protection is permanent.

Sport England's Playing Pitch Strategy

Every local authority in England should have - or be developing - a Playing Pitch Strategy (PPS). This is the document that tells the council how many playing pitches it needs, where the demand is, what condition the current stock is in, and where investment should go.

Your club's future is shaped by this document in ways most committees don't realise. If the PPS identifies your ground as surplus to requirements, you're vulnerable. If it identifies your ground as essential to meeting local demand, you're protected. If it identifies a need for facility improvements at your site, that's your evidence base for grant applications.

Sport England's guidance on Playing Pitch Strategies explains the methodology. More usefully, your council's completed PPS should be a public document - ask for it, or search the council website. Read the sections relevant to your sport and your area. If your club isn't mentioned, that's a problem you should raise with the council's leisure and recreation team.

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 - your club or the council.

Cover everything: playing surface, artificial pitches (if applicable), practice nets, pavilion or clubhouse, changing rooms, showers, kitchen and catering facilities, storage, car park, fencing, floodlighting, scoreboard, PA system, toilets, spectator areas.

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 season.

If your pavilion is a listed building or in a conservation area - and many older cricket and football pavilions are - note this specifically. Listed building consent adds time and cost to any improvement works, and it's better to know this before you start planning a refurbishment than when you're halfway through the grant application.

This audit becomes your 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 the 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 structure:

| Day | Time | Area | User | Purpose | |-----|------|------|------|---------| | Monday | 6:00-7:30pm | Main pitch | Senior football | Training | | Tuesday | 4:00-5:30pm | Main pitch | Junior football (U12s) | Training | | Tuesday | 6:00-8:00pm | Pavilion | Committee | Meeting (monthly) | | Wednesday | 6:00-7:30pm | Main pitch | Senior football | Training | | Thursday | 4:00-6:00pm | Practice nets | Cricket nets | Training (summer) | | Thursday | 6:30-8:00pm | Pavilion | Walking football | Pay-to-play session | | Saturday | 10:00am-5:00pm | Main pitch | Cricket club | Match day (summer) | | Saturday | 1:30-5:00pm | Main pitch | Football club | Match day (winter) | | Sunday | 10:00am-12:00pm | Main pitch | Junior cricket | Coaching (summer) | | Sunday | 9:30am-12:00pm | Main pitch | Junior football | Matches (winter) |

Include every user: your club, co-tenant clubs, schools using Community Use Agreements, 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 the council a clear picture of how intensively the facility is used (which matters when they're deciding whether to invest or divest), and helps you identify underutilised time slots that could generate hire revenue.

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

The cricket-football handover

This deserves its own section because it's the most common source of facility conflict in English grassroots sport, and it happens twice a year.

The outfield that was a football pitch until March needs to become a cricket ground by April. The square that was hibernating under the outfield needs to be prepared. The football goalposts need to come down. The cricket sight screens need to go up. And both clubs think they should have the pavilion that weekend.

A written handover protocol - agreed before the season, not during the argument - should cover:

• Exact dates. When does the football season end and the cricket season begin on this ground? Specify to the day.
• Square protection. When does the cricket square become off-limits to football? (This is usually several weeks before the cricket season starts, to allow preparation.)
• Shared spaces. Who gets the pavilion on overlap weekends? Is there a rotating priority?
• Equipment. Who is responsible for moving goalposts, sight screens, boundary rope? Who stores what and where?
• Communication. A named contact from each club who speaks to each other when something comes up. Not a committee-to-committee exchange of formal letters - two people who have each other's mobile numbers.

If your council manages the allocation, they may have a standard handover process. If they don't, create one yourselves and send it to the council as evidence that you've got it sorted.

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, kitchen and catering area upkeep, storage management, reporting issues to the council promptly.

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

But if your lease was signed in 2004, the maintenance split might be vague - or it might not reflect what actually happens in practice. Some clubs quietly take on tasks that are technically the council's responsibility because waiting for the council to act means waiting until the changing room ceiling collapses. That's understandable, but if you're spending club money on council-owned assets without a documented agreement, you have no recourse when the 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 the council to clarify. A short email exchange now beats a heated argument about who was supposed to fix the boiler.

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.

Section 106 and developer contributions

When housing developments receive planning permission, the local authority often requires the developer to make contributions towards local infrastructure - including sports and recreation facilities. These are called Section 106 contributions (or Community Infrastructure Levy payments, depending on the council's framework).

If there's significant housing development happening near your club, there may be money earmarked for sports facility improvements that nobody has told you about. This isn't hypothetical - it's how many clubs have funded floodlight upgrades, artificial pitch installations, and pavilion refurbishments.

The process: check your council's planning applications register for nearby developments. Contact the council's planning obligations or Section 106 officer. Ask whether any sport and recreation contributions have been agreed as part of those developments. If they have, make the case that your club's facility should benefit. Having a facility plan makes this conversation dramatically easier.

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, Sport England, Football Foundation, ECB, National Lottery, Section 106, club reserves, fundraising
5. Timeline - when would you realistically like this done?

An example:

• Priority 1: Upgrade floodlighting to FA-compliant training standard. Estimated cost: £60,000. Funding: 50% Football Foundation grant, 30% Section 106 contribution, 20% club reserves. Timeline: before next winter season.
• Priority 2: Accessible changing rooms and toilets. Estimated cost: £90,000. Funding: council accessibility programme plus Sport England grant. Timeline: 18 months.
• Priority 3: Solar panels on pavilion roof. Estimated cost: £12,000. Funding: club reserves plus community energy grant. Timeline: 2-3 years.

This is what you take to the council, to Sport England, and to the Football Foundation when asking for support. It turns a vague request - "we need better facilities" - into a costed proposal with identified funding sources. Grant assessors want to see this level of planning. Councils want to see it. It makes their decision easier.

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 relationship with your local authority - it's worth reading. We've reviewed the book here. For the Australian perspective, see our facility plan guide for Australian clubs - the Crown land and council lease structures work differently, but the principles of documenting what you have and planning what you need are universal.

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 2021. 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 - that's healthy), 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 resolve the annual cricket-football handover argument - nothing short of a second ground will do that - but it gives everyone a single source of truth about who's booked where and when. And when the council asks for evidence of facility usage at your next lease review, you can produce it in minutes rather than weeks.

FAQs

Do we need a facility plan if we just book pitches seasonally through the council?

Yes - arguably more so. Seasonal pitch booking gives you the least security of tenure, which means you need to work harder to demonstrate your value. A facility plan shows the council that you're organised, that you take care of the facility, and that you're thinking about the long term. That's the kind of evidence that helps when you're negotiating for a more secure arrangement - like a lease. It also strengthens any grant applications, because assessors want to see that you can manage a facility responsibly.

Who should be responsible for the facility plan on the committee?

Ideally, create a facilities officer or grounds manager role. In practice, it often falls to the secretary or chair. The important thing is that one person owns it, it gets reviewed annually, and it doesn't disappear when that person steps down. Keep it in a shared system - not a personal hard drive, not a personal email account. The plan belongs to the club, not to the individual.

Our ground might be under threat from development. What can we do?

Three things, in order. First, check whether your ground has Fields in Trust protection - if it does, there's a legal barrier to development. Second, get a copy of your council's Playing Pitch Strategy and check whether your ground is identified as needed for meeting local demand - if it is, the council will find it harder to justify disposal. Third, make formal representations to the council with your facility plan, usage data, and membership numbers. A club that can demonstrate it serves 200 families in the community is much harder to displace than one that can't articulate its own value. If development pressure is serious, consider contacting Sport England's Planning team, who have a formal role in the planning process as a statutory consultee on applications affecting playing fields.

References

• Fields in Trust - Protecting Playing Fields
• Sport England - Playing Pitch Strategy Guidance
• Sport England - Planning for Sport
• The Football Foundation - Facility Funding
• ECB - Facility Development
• Historic England - Listed Buildings Guidance
• UK Government - Section 106 Planning Obligations