The strategic sports facility resource, Active Places, has been updated with the latest facility and grass pitch intelligence adding to the accuracy and completeness of Sport England's widely-used website: http://activeplaces.com/
The Leisure Database Company, contracted by Sport England to maintain Active Places, has completed a comprehensive, 15 month, audit of over 28,000 sport sites and 56,000 facilities across the country, further making Active Places the most comprehensive database of sports facilities in England.
The exhaustive audit of sports facilities identified 2,800 additional sites, mainly grass pitch sites, which had previously not been recorded.
Charles Johnston, Sport England's Property Director, said:
"Active Places has an important role in helping people find great places to play sport and assisting local councils to plan strategically for the future of sport in their areas.
"We know that by making up-to-date facilities data available, we are giving councils the information they need to make sound investment decisions. That's why we are always working to improve and promote Active Places as an intelligence tool for grassroots sport."
David Minton, director of The Leisure Database Company added, "We are proud of our quality achievements for Active Places intelligence which we believe will impact positively on sports participation".
"As well as our regular survey of the site, we regularly follow up with sites during the year for specific facility developments such as new facilities, refurbishments or temporary closures.
"We track planning applications to identify new sporting sites under development as well as monitoring over 28,000 online news sources for leads on changes to Active Places facilities, whether it's a school swimming pool boiler exploding or a new grant from the Football Foundation to fund a new synthetic pitch at a grass pitch site," added Jamie Buck, Active Places, Project Manager at The Leisure Database Company.
A new audit cycle is about to commence which will see all 28,000 sports sites re-surveyed for ongoing developments.
