Community Sports Facilities

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Bone, for giving me the opportunity to speak in the debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) for making a fantastic speech, especially given that she had the hindrance of a croaky throat. During my time as a lead member for leisure on Swindon borough council, we had great pleasure in visiting the Riverside boxing facility. As someone who is not quite as passionate about boxing as my hon. Friend, I was extremely passionate about the huge difference that it made to very challenging communities. I am thinking particularly of the links that it had with the Navy and the Army. Those links enabled people with real drive and enthusiasm to be identified and given an alternative opportunity in life. That facility should certainly be praised.

I want to cover a couple of subjects. I have spoken in similar debates in Westminster Hall in recent weeks, but I am delighted to see that I have a slightly different audience today, so I can recycle some of the points.

The Centre for Social Justice highlighted in its recently published report the vicious cycle whereby prices rise to raise revenue and that threatens participation levels. That is not an idle threat. Local authorities that are under pressure to balance revenues and expenditure often turn to the services that we are debating and consider hiking up prices. In my local authority, when Labour was last running the council, it decided to increase leisure centre prices year on year. That was a false economy not only because usage went down, but because the revenue that it collected went down. I urge local authorities throughout the country to think carefully before taking a short cut to try to raise revenue.

There are alternatives. We found that as we invested capital in the council leisure facilities, we prioritised invest-to-save schemes. For example, as the Football Foundation has identified, there is a chronic shortage of 3G football pitches. By local authority standards, they are relatively cheap to build, and they generate huge amounts of revenue, which can be used to offset other, loss-making leisure activities. We built three 3G pitches at the back of the Link leisure centre on a four-year payback scheme. That paid itself off after 13 months. As in that example, when councils want to invest in leisure facilities, they should partner them with those few sports activities that are so popular that they can generate sufficient income to help to offset the losses made by others.

Local authorities should do far more on marketing where facilities are not being fully utilised. I will use the example of 3G football pitches again. Until I was elected to Parliament, I used to play football with a group of people every Tuesday night. Every so often, at those peak times, there would be a cancellation. Once the hour arrived and the pitch was not being used, that time was lost for ever. I felt that there were so many groups making regular bookings that the authority should have built up a database. It could then have sent out an e-mail to say, “The Thursday 7 pm club is not coming this week. The first club to reply can take up the space available.” That club could pay half the price, so participation would be increased and the local authority would not be wasting money. It would basically be a case of copying what the airline companies do when they are trying to sell off their last few seats.

We should be much more confident about empowering the respective managers to allow people who turn up to play. I am thinking particularly of younger people. Use of the 3G football pitches normally costs £42 an hour. If one is empty, but a group of teenagers turn up and between them they can cobble together £2.50, we should take that £2.50. An additional benefit is that they would be encouraged to use facilities in a controlled and safe environment.

Councils can play other roles, one of which is facilitating sports clubs to find a home. I set up the very successful Sports Forum, which has got more than 60 different sports clubs in Swindon working together. One challenge that many sports clubs have is finding a home where they can participate in their sport. The best example of that was the Esprit gymnastics club, which was based in an industrial retail park and became so successful that 450 children a week were using the facility. However, all the other tenants of the park complained that there were no car parking spaces left, so the club was told that it needed to find a new home.

The club gallantly searched high and low in Swindon, but no buildings with a sufficiently large roof were available, so the council stepped in and identified a building—Headlands school sports hall. Headlands school was being bulldozed to build an academy a few miles down the road, so the relatively new £4 million sports hall was also set to be bulldozed. To cut a long story short, it was agreed that Esprit gymnastics club would take on that building and pay a commercial rent. It was a not-for-profit business, but it obviously charged the children to take part. The sports hall was a considerably bigger facility, for which it was then able to obtain external funding. Now, on a weekly basis, more than 2,000 children use that facility, which is still standing.

The people to whom I have been referring have sub-let part of the building to the Kirsty Farrow dance academy, which is very successful, and the Leadership martial arts academy, so it is a thriving community facility. They also manage the neighbouring football pitches. The local authority does not run the facility. It is run by volunteers so successfully that I am determined repeatedly to invite my hon. Friend the Minister to visit it to see what a fantastic jewel in the crown it is for Swindon.

Last week, I met people from Swindon Supermarine rugby football club, which is based on the Swindon Supermarine collective site. That includes the football club, the archery club, the bowls club, the diving club and, of course, the rugby club. They want to build additional facilities, including an indoor 3G facility not just for rugby, but for football and other sports. The Rugby Football Union will be supporting that. I am delighted that, following that meeting, Swindon borough council has agreed to offer as much advice as it can ahead of the process of looking to build, putting in bids and going through the planning process. All those different sports clubs will come together and work together, so that that site continues to be something very valuable for my constituency.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) for securing this important debate. At the outset, I declare that I am a parliamentary fellow of Sport England. My intervention is linked to the point about local authorities. Does my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) agree that it is crucial that excellent local authorities, such as his, work in partnership with organisations such as Sport England? That organisation has launched the £32 million Sportivate programme to get 14 to 25-year-olds playing sport. It is attracting more than 300,000 extra people into playing sport. Local authorities need to work in partnership with excellent organisations such as Sport England to ensure that everyone can play sports.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend. His intervention is very helpful because it ties in perfectly with my next point. To return to the Sports Forum principle, one reason why that is so successful, with the 60 different sports clubs coming together, is that there is a pool of expertise that can draw on national organisations that can come and give presentations. The Sports Forum meets every three months. We are talking about three 30-minute segments. They are advertised in advance. One segment could be, for example, about how Sport England can help, and Sport England will come along and give a presentation.

There is the sharing of best practice. For example, some sports clubs were looking for facilities and some sports clubs had facilities that were under-utilised. They merged to become stronger as a unit. Also, the expertise can be provided to apply for funding, because if ever we need nuclear physicists, it is for filling in funding application forms. We were fortunate in Swindon because we had many people who were very good at that, and they helped other sports groups to apply for funding.

I would extend what I am talking about to local authority leisure centres and sports centres. The Oasis leisure centre—the rather famous band copied the name— wants to have a major redevelopment. It will be, in all senses, a leisure centre, rather than a place for serious sport, which will leave our other major centre, the Link centre, pretty much providing the sports side. I should like the Sports Forum to have a much greater role in running that, because it has expertise in how to deliver sport and because that could help to attract external funding. An example is the new netball facility that was built. The national netball association and local netball clubs are helping to set the programme and ensuring that that is a big success. We must use the skills that sports clubs have.

I want to deal briefly with private finance initiative schools and community facilities. While I was a councillor, there were many shiny, brand-new schools in the new housing estate that I represented. We did not have a huge amount of open space other than inside the large fences of the PFI schools. They charged an absolute fortune and priced many different community groups out of there. It was an absolute, crying shame; we had young people who wanted to turn up and kick a football around, but they could not get access to the open fields. We must be careful of that, especially in built-up areas.

I have been trying to push for more sport in the community on Friday and Saturday nights, using community facilities such as school buildings, local authority sports facilities, parish councils and community centres. We as a nation spend a huge amount of money on youth services and facilities, and although some are good, many are not. It would be far better for the local authority to use the money to commission football or street dance coaches, for example, to work in those facilities. The respective local authority, parish council or school would not charge for the use of those facilities. All that they would have to do is raise a bit of money to go towards the cost of the coaches, and that could come from the youth service budget. Children could be charged 50p a time, so that they have a sense of ownership. In that way, we could get them doing something active and constructive on Friday and Saturday nights. When I go around schools and colleges, the idea is very much supported by young people. Last week, a sports coach UK organisation told me that it was interested in the idea and that it could provide a long list of potential coaches for the different areas. I am sure that many other organisations would get behind such a scheme.

On planning issues, we are right to focus on sports facilities—physical buildings—but often all that we need to do is ensure that there is sufficient open space. I previously represented a new build estate where there was not sufficient accessible, usable open space. Under the technical national definitions, we had lots, but they just happened to be lots of hedges and places where we certainly could not kick a football. We need to be mindful of that.

When I was growing up, we were influenced by whatever was on TV. If it was the Tour de France, out came the bikes. If it was cricket, out came the cricket bats. We played football for the majority of the year and tennis for the three days that we used to last at Wimbledon in those days.

We need to take advantage of the new homes bonus and section 106. Too often, leisure is not at the forefront of getting money to invest in facilities. For the smaller developments in existing residential areas, we should consider using some of the money to provide more accessible, usable open space or traditional sports community facilities. Again, we should consider the opportunity to devolve the ownership and the running of those sports clubs.

We have previously talked about school sport partnerships. I was delighted that the Government extended the time for them to secure a future. The vast majority, or at least the ones that were doing a good job, have been successful in doing that. My only plea concerns the facilities that they then provide activities in. The people involved are often fantastic coaches. They are fantastic at getting support for volunteers, but they are not necessarily business-minded. As not-for-profit businesses, they need some help and training to ensure that they are good at running the books, so that they can continue to do a fantastic job.

I am encouraged by a much of what the Government are doing. This is something that the Government take very seriously. The Minister is well thought of by all the sporting groups that I meet. We must ensure that this matter remains very high on the political radar, both locally and nationally.

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[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr Bone, for asking me to speak, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on securing this excellent debate. The timing is appropriate because this is the year of the Olympics in London. It is right that we should be focusing on sport. It is right, too, because we need to encourage people to live more healthily. Exercise definitely leads to a healthier lifestyle. My hon. Friend was right to emphasise the importance of exercise.

Let me talk about my own district council of Stroud, which has just reopened its leisure centre to great success. I pay tribute to Councillor Keith Pearson and his team for having the imagination to get on with the job of delivering an outstanding centre with so many improvements on the previous regime. Gone are the days of Mr Brittas and the “Brittas Empire”. Instead, we have an efficiently run organisation with clean facilities. The changing rooms are absolutely excellent and I invite Members to come and see them at any time—preferably to change for some sport. The centre demonstrates that councils can do things properly if they put their minds to it, and Stroud district council has done exactly that.

The centre expects some 25,000 users from the community around Stroud, which is a fairly impressive number. There is also Dursley swimming pool, which has a solar panel system to assist with the heating, so the pool is not just really good for the community but environmentally friendly. Things can be done by Conservative councils, and I applaud that. It is important that we recognise that councils can and should play a role. It is also critical that communities outside the council help in these matters, too.

My son is a footballer; he is a pretty impressive defender. I often go and watch him play at various football clubs across my constituency. It is really great to see so many clubs flourishing and providing decent pitches for people to play on and it is a great tribute to local communities that they allow these facilities to be developed and then support them. The support that local communities give to such clubs is critical.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about local communities and local authorities. Medway has just spent £11 million on the Medway Olympic park in one of its most deprived areas—there is a seven-year life expectancy difference between one part of the constituency and another. Does he agree that it is crucial to get such facilities in deprived areas as well as in affluent ones, so that children with social deprivation issues can use the facilities and improve their health as well?

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I am grateful to him for making it, because that is an important point. We must ensure that we reach out to all communities, especially the ones that he has described. We must have healthy people who enjoy their lives, are properly engaged and play a full part in the society that we want to create. That was what my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) was referring to when she spoke about people with disabilities, and it is great that she emphasised that point.

There are communities in my constituency that support people with disabilities in their interest in sport. Most impressively, a huge amount of money was raised for a swimming pool as St Rose’s school, Beeches Green, for people with severe disabilities. That is wonderful; it shows that people care, that they can deliver the right kind of support and that people recognise that absolutely everybody should have opportunities to play sport wherever possible, which is completely right.

There are also threats to sport in my constituency. Stroud rugby club needs a new facility and to upgrade its rooms—in fact, it needs to move. We must help clubs such as that to seize the initiative effectively and ensure that they can deliver the right kind of facilities for the huge number of young people who want to play rugby. The place is full on a Sunday morning. My son is no longer interested in going to the rugby club at weekends—it’s football for him, although he plays rugby at school—but those who go to Stroud rugby club are really enthusiastic, and that is an important stepping stone to more involvement in sport. I am very keen for Stroud rugby club to thrive and I support it in its endeavours.

I went to Gloucester rugby club a few weekends ago to watch a very exciting game between Gloucester and Toulouse—my wife is French, so there were some issues about who was supporting whom. While there, I noticed the sheer involvement of the people watching the match. We must not forget that element when we talk about facilities. It is important to encourage people to go to and support sporting events. They will be watching people they know—members of their families and so forth—which is part of the collective activity of sport and should be promoted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West mentioned corporate support; it is important and we should encourage it. The Government need to find ways to help to lever in the corporate support that is so necessary for many fledgling clubs and for developed clubs that want to move forward or expand their assets or facilities. We should not forget the sports such as skateboarding that we would not necessarily think of as sport, because they also give opportunities to young people to be involved.

The community facilities that we want are essential, and should be encouraged to develop into other services as well, such as social clubs, because that gives them an added dimension and another way to be successful. I have noticed that the clubs in my constituency that have moved on and developed in that way have prospered, and they continue to provide excellent opportunities for young people.

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[Hugh Robertson]

That is absolutely right. Of course it is important that any part of an area applying for funding should show enthusiasm and commitment by raising a bit of money itself. I am not saying that we will remove that but, without going into the Football Foundation’s finances in any great detail this afternoon, there are two connected problems.

First, the Football Foundation is increasingly finding it difficult, through no fault of its own, to get exactly matched funding from local authorities. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell. Secondly, because it takes longer to gain that funding and the Football Foundation is partially Exchequer funded, it finds it difficult to shift the capital inside the financial year—1 April to 31 March. It does not want to get into a position whereby because it cannot shift the stuff out the door and get the match funding, it has to hand the money back. We are talking about quite a complicated accountancy issue. Suffice it to say, the Football Foundation is a first-class organisation and I am delighted that my hon. Friend is involved with it. We will do what we can to help it as soon as things ease.

On the contribution of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Eltham, he is absolutely right to draw attention to the health benefits of sport, which many other hon. Members also mentioned. It is enormously encouraging that the Department of Health—I thank it for this—now deals with that directly in primary schools through the Change 4 Life sports clubs. It has committed to funding that for the foreseeable future.

[Rehman Chishti]

I congratulate the Minister on being one of the finest Ministers in the Government. I do not say that because he is a fellow Kent MP or because he is a fellow cricketer; I say it simply on merit. He will be aware that some excellent research carried out by Sport England has shown that if sport participation were to increase by 1 million people weekly, the taxpayer would save £22.5 billion in health associated costs. What are we doing to encourage and get that extra 1 million people playing sport a week?

[Hugh Robertson]

An extra 1 million people a week would cover the entire population inside a year, would it not? It is a lovely idea, and I thank my hon. Friend both for his kind comments and his obvious enthusiasm, which is undoubted. One of the extraordinary features of community sport in recent years has been that, despite the huge impact of lottery funding, the number of people participating in sport in the community has remained rigidly static or has marginally fallen over a 10-year period.

There are a number of reasons for that and this afternoon is not the time to go into them, but I will mention a couple of factors. The measurement system is very tough and people have to play three separate instances of sport. People who play top league cricket or hockey generally train in the week and play at the weekend, so they fail the measure. The measure uses fixed telephone lines, so we are not convinced that enough young people are being picked up. It is also fair to say that the sport governing bodies who now have responsibility for the matter have not worked out the consumer behaviour changes that are required to make it work. A number of issues are tied up with the participation measure, but getting it shifted is absolutely at the centre of what we are trying to do.

The shadow Minister mentioned the national planning policy framework. He is right. The Government’s objective was clearly to reduce a vast number of planning regulations to a much smaller and more easily manageable document. As a result of that, a number of things have gone out of the window. I have spent a lot of time with sports going through exactly what they need. I have also spent time with both Sport England and the big five. He will be familiar with that term, which relates to football, both codes of rugby, cricket and tennis. We have been to see the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). Formal submissions have been made and informal meetings have been held. We will wait to see the effect of that when the consultation is completed.

The hon. Gentleman talked about partnerships with local sports clubs. The 6,000 figure that is used is the number of new clubs that sport governing bodies themselves think they can set up. That is a figure given to us as a result of statistics collected mainly from the FA, the Rugby Football League, the RFU, the ECB and the Lawn Tennis Association.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned floodlights. That issue is tied up with the consultations on the NPPF. Someone can apply for floodlights under the Inspired Facilities part of Places People Play. As I say, if I had put my hand up this afternoon and said, “We have absolutely cracked angry residents who don’t like floodlights on their sports facilities,” it would not have been entirely fair. However, he is absolutely right to raise the matter.