KKP has a vacancy for a research consultant to support delivery of its open spaces needs assessments and strategies, play strategies and related work.

The successful candidate will be part of our expert team delivering a wide range of assignments and will gain unrivalled experience in the field of open space related commissions as well as wider sport and leisure consultancy.

The role is wide-ranging; from interviewing volunteers, residents and community groups about the quality, quantity and value of open space typologies and ancillary facilities to undertaking site visits, recording/analysing data and preparing reports.

The successful candidate will be conscientious, well-organised and a good communicator. S/he must have a good level of IT literacy, be able to work as part of a team and on his/her own initiative and have the skills to produce high quality written reports.

A full driving licence is essential as the job will involve travel throughout the UK. The role is based at KKP’s offices in North Manchester, but you must be flexible and willing to work on projects that involve both working from home and being away overnight in various parts of the country on a regular basis.

Salary, (based on qualifications, experience, and aptitude) starts from £25,400 per annum. In addition, you receive a £300 per month car allowance and £30 per month telephone allowance. The total salary package is in excess of £29,000, and you will be eligible to join the company’s private health scheme.

For an informal discussion or to request further details contact Chris MacFarlane on 0161 764 7040.

To apply for this position please send an up-to-date CV and covering letter explaining why you are suited to this position – to josie.atherton@kkp.co.uk

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30^th April at 12 noon.

KKP is an equal opportunity employer

Having attracted a high level of interest and in the face of strong competition, England Golf (EG) has awarded the contract to deliver this vital work to KKP. In so doing, it noted that its decision is based primarily on the strength of the Company’s track record in comparable projects for a variety of sports and our experience in delivering golf-related needs assessments.

The strategy process will incorporate development of a long-term vision and strategy for golf facilities in England. The intention is to strengthen the NGB’s position as the national lead agency for golf supply/demand insight optimising its capacity to address provision gaps and protect golf facilities. The strategy is key to achieving its ambition to get ahead of its demanding facilities planning workload and proactively improve the quality, scale and robustness of its input to local plans, ANOG-based outdoor sports assessments and golf planning per se.

KKP will analyse EG’s present data and intelligence on the sector and the golf facility mix in England and evaluate how to best utilise and extend this. This will culminate in development of a data platform which makes EG the go to agency for golf-related supply/demand information setting out how it will, for example:

• Strengthen the robustness of its input to all planning applications which affect golf provision.
• Lead on the integration of ‘traditional’ golf provision with new and alternative formats including indoor golf, simulators and driving ranges etc.) enabling improvement to the mix of facilities nationally.
• Better identify non-membership and ‘nomadic’ pay and play based participation so that all types and formats of play are fully factored into the assessment of demand.
• Advocate/apply mitigation options to strengthen pathways into longer-term participation.
• Establish a clear framework for handling planning enquiries, determine ‘best practice’ and consider how golf needs assessments can be aligned to the NPPF, ANOG and Sport England’s Playing Fields Policy.
• Inform consultation with Sport England and LAs to identify golf provision that may currently be at risk.

Key to this is ensuring that local councils and other spatial planning authorities better understand golf provision in their area and the sporting and environmental benefits that it and its facilities bring to the community.

In taking on this assignment, KKP brings to the table its experience delivering similar, complex national facility strategies for other NGBs including, in recent years, the RFL, England Hockey, England Athletics and Badminton England. This is in addition to its current work (commissioned by London Sport and Sport England) to review and provide guidance about how to tackle issues associated with loss of access to, and the closure of, playing fields in the capital.

It also builds on the Company’s direct experience of assessing supply/demand for golf (utilised in delivery of more than 40 local authority facilities strategies) the wide range of golf-specific needs assessments delivered and its other work assessing, planning for, developing/improving the performance of, and supporting the protection and development of golf facilities. EG’s current approach will also be benchmarked with other NGBs to determine whether lessons can be learnt and improvements made.

Gavin Anderson at EG commented “we are delighted, with the support of Sport England, to be working with KKP on this strategy. It put forward the strongest case for developing a standardised methodology to establish a robust supply and demand framework and had the best track record delivering other similar projects for a variety of sports…it was also the best positioned agency when it came to tackling the more pressing need of developing the support frameworks required to ensure a more consistent and nationally recognised approach.’

Steve Wright, principal consultant and director is leading KKP’s project team. He commented: ‘KKP is proud to be entrusted with this vital work at a crucial time for the sport. We shall work closely with EG to ensure that it is best placed to both protect and develop golf facilities (of all forms) and to build its role and profile as the key source of authoritative supply/demand intelligence for key facilities planning processes’.

Steven Wright is available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email steve.wright@kkp.co.uk

Notes for editors

KKP is a leading UK-based multi-disciplinary national and international sports consultancy practice. It offers specialist advice and impartial, objective and creative support to a wide range of clients. This commission builds on our extensive track record in this field – which includes national and local indoor and outdoor built sports facilities, playing pitch and open spaces planning.

KKP’s golf needs assessment local authority client portfolio includes Blackburn-with-Darwen, Horsham, Leicester, Coventry, Solihull, Rushcliffe, Wakefield, Kirklees, St Helens, Sunderland, Blaby and South Ayrshire.  We also deliver assessments for private sector clients – these include Arcadis, Wain Homes and Anwyl Homes

More detail about KKP’s work, clients and projects is available at www.kkp.co.uk

Coventry is the most central and ninth largest city in England with a population of 361,000.  Its growth particularly among younger adults, in part parallels the expansion and success of the city’s two universities and the increasing numbers of better-paid jobs in certain sectors of the local economy.

It is a ‘Marmot City’, which means that partners and the Council are taking a whole systems approach to tackling health inequalities and to creating and developing healthy, sustainable places and communities. This strategy will set out the role that physical activity and sport can play in helping to address this.

Coventry has performed well relative to national trends and comparable towns and cities. However, while the situation in the City has improved notably when comparing its Indices of Multiple Deprivation position in 2015 and 2019 it still ranks between the 64th and 81st most deprived local authority area (out of 317) in England and 28 (14%) of the City’s 195 neighbourhoods are amongst the most deprived 10% in England. Levels of inactivity, obesity and ill health are challenging, and it ranks particularly high for income deprivation affecting children and older people (IDACI and IDOPI).

The current Coventry Sports Strategy and its Physical Activity Framework “Coventry on the Move” both run to 2024. The City Council is keen to develop a new overarching strategy which encompasses both elements and has commissioned KKP to support this process.

The Council is (and will be) via its multi-partner Strategy Development Group (SDG) working closely with a range of agencies to create and deliver the strategy. These include, among others, the City’s Public Health Service, CV Life (which operates all its main sporting facilities and cultural venues), Think Active (the active partnership for Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire), the Positive Youth Foundation, the West Midlands Combined Authority and Sport England.

To initiate and inform the process, the SDG has collated and analysed national and local data. KKP will critique and build on this so that helps create a foundation for a robust strategy – one which will inform and drive physical activity and sport delivery, planning, accessibility and opportunity in the City over the next 5-10 years. Aligning to Sport England’s ‘Uniting the Movement’, the City Strategy will:

• Set a strategic framework vision, aims and objectives which align with CCC corporate plans, local public health and physical activity policies and objectives.
• Incorporate an action plan designed to ensure that impact is optimised – making a real difference tackling the City’s commitment to health inequalities in defined groups and in specific geographic areas.
• Specify required actions, particularly in relation to key target groups, and recommended KPIs – in a five-year action plan, schedule and ‘road map’ and associated monitoring framework.

In addition to drawing on KKP’s substantial experience in this area of work, the process will optimise the value and knowledge acquired via the Company’s delivery of a range of strategic facilities and services planning assignments with/for Coventry.

Cllr Kamran Caan, Cabinet Member for Public Health and Sport at Coventry City Council, said:

“We are delighted, with the support of Sport England, to be working with KKP on this strategy to build on the progress we’ve made over recent years. We are fully aware of the depth, breadth and quality of its work and welcome its support for our SDG, its review of what we do, where, why and how – and its delivery of the strategy consultation process in the City.

“This strategy isn’t just about sports facilities; it’s about making physical activity accessible for everyone in Coventry. By focusing on our communities and being smarter about where resources go, we can tackle health inequalities and make sure our city is moving forward together.”

Andrew Fawkes, principal consultant at KKP is leading KKP’s project team. He commented:

“It is great to be able to follow up our strategic facilities planning input in the City with this assignment. We shall be working closely with the SDG, Council and key agency staff and stakeholders to look at where and how its whole systems approach can be strengthened and analyse where and how resource can be best applied to deliver the physical activity and related health and social outcomes the City is looking for”.

Notes for editors

KKP is a specialist consultancy practice in the sport, physical activity, wellbeing and leisure field. Company sport/physical activity strategy clients include Westminster, Nottingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Preston, Bury and Coventry itself. Over the last four years, we have produced comparable strategies for Birmingham, LB Bromley, Bridgend, Blackpool, St Helens, Wyre and the States of Jersey.

Our team brings specific expertise referencing/absorbing wider strategic contexts, analysing and supporting whole system and place-based approaches to strategy and action plan development. This encompasses steering/working group support, consultation (individual/focus groups/workshops) plus, proactively and reactively, identifying, defining and refining strategic themes and goals.

Andrew Fawkes is available for interview. Please contact KKP via (0)161 764 7040 or email andrew.fawkes@kkp.co.uk

Full details about KKP’s work, clients and projects are available at www.kkp.co.uk

KKP has recently received effusive feedback on our work successfully supporting local authority clients in Wirral and Birmingham at planning inquiries. In both cases, KKP colleagues were brought in to support and amplify playing pitch and outdoor sports facilities needs assessments and strategies (PPOSS), which we delivered, to defend the councils’ position opposing the potential loss of playing fields – to unwanted residential development.

One of the planning colleagues with whom we worked, in his feedback to KKP, cited the fact that his Authority had commissioned a comprehensive PPS and that the detail contained therein was thus robust, thorough and difficult to challenge. He went on to praise the way in which my colleague ‘prepared his evidence, defended it in the face of testing cross examination (from the appellant’s KC) and assisted the Council’s KC in his cross examination of the appellant’s equivalent expert witness’.

Sport England’s principal planning manager, who worked on both, weighed in making the point for the first inquiry, that ‘the Inspector clearly references the fact that the PPOSS protects the site and that there was no evidence presented that the appellant had explored bringing it back into use – I do believe that your evidence helped secure this decision’. This was followed up, for the second, by him saying ‘another good appeal decision, well done once again! – this one is particularly helpful as it’s clear that the inspector understood the PPOSS methodology when considering the case being made that the site was surplus’.

While we are rightly proud of our contribution to these planning inquiries, we are equally satisfied with the fact that the needs assessments upon which the defence is built enabled the local authorities (and KKP) to withstand what were described as ‘bruising’ and ‘gladiatorial exchanges’.

A key point, one regularly reinforced by our wider cohort of local authority planner clients, is that ‘PPOSS documents need to be kept up to date and regularly refreshed as both the availability of sites and user profiles are dynamic and subject to change’. This is critical. In another metropolitan authority, the growth in the number of football teams over the five-year period between KKP’s prior and most recent PPOSS delivery equated to circa 70 teams.

From a facility funding perspective, ensuring that such information is fully up to date is critical as, based on this specific example, it can be the difference between being able to secure developer contributions to build a full-sized 3G pitch as opposed to a much smaller and arguably less beneficial facility.

This scenario is, particularly in more densely populated urban areas, not uncommon fuelled by the seemingly inexorable growth of junior football of which a substantial component is the further evolution of the girl’s and women’s game.

The fact that housing is a central Government agenda and that the quest for land for housing development is as relentless as the growth in football means that the value of having an up-to-date, high quality, thorough, robust and regularly refreshed PPOSS is, arguably, higher than it has ever been.

For more information about the above, or if you would like to discuss your upcoming PPOSS requirements contact Steve Wright (steve.wright@kkp.co.uk).

KKP is the UK’s leading authority on, and deliverer of, playing pitch, outdoor sports, indoor sports and open spaces needs assessments and strategies (plus combinations thereof). www.kkp.co.uk

The number, condition and accessibility of grassroots football facilities (natural grass and 3G) have an ongoing impact on participation (among male and female players of all ages) and on the value and effectiveness of the domestic player pathway.

The FA’s 10-year strategy to change the landscape of football facilities in England has, for the last 4-6 years, been underpinned by an action plan for investment in every local authority, referred to as a local football facility plan (LFFP). These are utilised, by the Football Foundation and county FAs as one (among others) of the strategic indicators of facility need (albeit preferably endorsed by an up-to-date PPS generated needs assessment) and thus help to justify Foundation capital investment.

Working closely with the FA and county FAs, the Football Foundation, Sport England and the DCMS, KKP delivered the original LFFP programme. Run over an intensive two-year period, all 318 LFFPs, one for each local authority in England, were completed by between 2018 and mid-2020.

The feedback on existing facilities received at the time as part of the LFFP process mirrored the national strategy painting a picture of poor-quality grass pitches, changing pavilions requiring refurbishment and insufficient club/team access to sports lit, 3G football turf pitches.  Having, as part of that process, spoken directly to over 2,000 grassroots football clubs, 300 local authorities plus a range of other stakeholders, the LFFPs developed by our team and the county FAs identified an excellent portfolio of pipeline projects.

This new round of refreshed LFFPs will update information held at all levels about the extent to which projects listed in the original plans have been implemented and the impact on local supply/demand. The process will also ensure that the new LFFPs reflect the 13% year-on-year growth in levels of participation in the girl’s and women’s game – which necessitates additional consideration in respect of the nature and quality of ancillary provision. Arguably also fuelled by the success of the national team, it is predicted that women and girls will account for 21% of all football demand by 2030.

It also reflects the Government’s desire to see that a wider range of sports benefit from this investment.

The majority (200+ and possibly up to 250) of the LFFPs originally commissioned are being updated. In some instances, local government structural change (resulting in fewer individual local authorities) need now to be accounted for. There is also a need for revised national capital expenditure estimates to inform the FA/ Football Foundation dialogue with the new Government about future investment in playing pitch provision.

Claire Waldron, Senior Facilities Planning Manager at the Football Foundation said ‘we are pleased to have commissioned KKP to update the excellent work delivered on the first round of LFFPs. KKP was commissioned, because of the quality of its submission, its knowledge and understanding of the LFFP process and because of its continued pre-eminence delivering playing pitch strategies – the findings and recommendations from many of which will usefully inform this process’.

Paul Hughes, Senior Consultant at KKP who is leading the national refresh process said ‘we were delighted to have been commissioned to deliver this assignment. In so doing, we are looking to build on the strong stakeholder commitment when we ran the original LFFP process, our own PPS-generated information and the excellent relationships we have with the Foundation, county FAs, NGBs and other partners in the sector’.

Contact: Paul Hughes: Senior Consultant (paul.hughes@kkp.co.uk)

Notes

KKP is a leading UK-based multi-disciplinary national and international sports consultancy practice. It offers specialist advice and impartial, objective and creative support to a wide portfolio of clients.

Full detail about KKP’s work, clients and projects is available at www.kkp.co.uk