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