Industry Funding the future The pots of gold
Protecting local ‘fields of dreams’ for community sport for the generations ahead is not the only imperative. Funding can help ensure these cherished green spaces are maintained in optimum condition.
Tom James searches for the pots of gold and talks to some that have tapped into them
B
ritain is on a mission to preserve its grassroots sporting heritage as never before. Constrained on all sides by national cutbacks, rising overheads and pressures to transform them into housing and retail and commercial developments, club sportsgrounds and playing fields are battling keep their corner that is forever England.
Diamond Jubilee year will mark a key contribution to the fight for survival as a national scheme to protect fields in perpetuity advances towards its goal of safeguarding recreational acres for the community.
The Queen Elizabeth II Fields Challenge, run by Fields in Trust (FIT) - the operating name of the National Playing Fields Association - and supported by HRH Prince William and SITA Trust, is aiming to protect 2,012 outdoor recreational spaces in communities across the country as “a permanent living legacy” of the Diamond Jubilee.
A wide range of funding is available to help ensure designated fields are not simply protected but are done so “in
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optimum condition”, FIT states. Funding attracted from the sources detailed below may not necessarily cover all the costs of capital projects that sites wish to undertake, but those running QEII Fields are proving resourceful in weeding out other funding streams, as our case studies reveal.
The tally of sites protected to date has passed the halfway mark and FIT is “confident” of reaching the target by year-end, it told Pitchcare. First out of the starting blocks was Fareham local authority in Hampshire, which nominated a site last April.
London Olympics borough, Greenwich, due to gain Royal status this year, has put forward three sites, one of which FIT used as the venue to launch its Save A Space For Me scheme -
http://www.qe2fields.com/news_details.aspx?ne wsid=6e480ea4-c5fc-4ba6-85d5- b6f54e9c251d
Edinburgh City Council has nominated the most sites for a city - twenty-two, whilst Salford put eighteen forward, but later wanted to whittle those down to two through the Save A Space For Me vote.
Once designated, a Queen Elizabeth II
Field can apply to SITA Trust’s £1m fund for improvements to its recreational facilities.
The fund has two strands:
First, the QEII Fields Volunteer Support Fund will award up to a maximum of £5,000 for projects where it can be demonstrated that volunteers will be extensively involved in the delivery of a project.
Second, the QEII Major Works Fund will award up to £25,000 for projects that also focus on delivery by volunteers, but that allow major works to be carried out by contractors.
A registered and accredited environmental body, the not-for-profit SITA Trust, is an ethical funding company that operates under the Landfill Communities Fund, supporting community improvement projects in ninety funding zones around qualifying waste processing sites owned by the recycling and resource management company SITA UK, which contributes money to the Trust.
The Trust was the first environmental body to be accredited by the Landfill Communities Fund regulator Entrust,
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