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Through Protecting Playing Fields, communities will be able to enhance local playing fields, or create new sports pitches. As part of the Places People Play mass participation legacy programme, the fund will help bring to life the inspiration and magic of a home Olympic and Paralympic Games for communities across the country.

Five £2 million Protecting Playing Fields funding rounds over the next three years will be run. Investing between £20,000 and £50,000, hundreds of projects will be supported helping to create, improve and protect playing fields by:

• Bringing disused playing fields back into use
• Improving the condition of pitches (e.g. levelling, drainage, reseeding)
• Buying new playing field land (not less than 0.2 hectares)
• Buying existing playing field land where there is a known threat, such as the expiry of a lease or a development proposal

Every playing field supported by this fund will also be protected from developers for at least 25 years[1], creating an enduring benefit for sport.

Sport England has also entered into a partnership with Fields in Trust (FIT) to support the protection of playing fields as part of the Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge. Successful applicants to Protecting Playing Fields who accept a Deed of Dedication of their playing field in “perpetuity” will have their project details passed to FIT. This will give them the opportunity to become a Queen Elizabeth II Field as part of the programme to mark the Diamond Jubilee and the London 2012 Olympics.

Protecting Playing Fields builds on the work Sport England already does to safeguard playing fields as a statutory consultee on all planning applications affecting a sports playing field. Playing fields are one of the most important resources for sport in England. There are over 59,200 playing pitches at 19,236 sites in England and over half of the grass pitches (33,200) are marked out for football[2].

Further information on the programme can be found at http://www.sportengland.org/funding/protecting_playing_fields.aspx

[1] Sport England will support community and voluntary groups and local authorities to protect all funded playing fields by placing a legal protection on the site for a minimum of 25 years.

[2] Active Places database January 2011.