Facilities & Planning

Our design guidance notes cover a wide range of sports from athletic tracks to synthetic turf pitches, sports pavilions to village halls.

They also provide advice on how to make sure your facility is fully accessible to people of all abilities.

Updated regularly, these documents are essential if you are planning a new facility, modernising an existing one or making a funding application involving facilities.

View our index of design guidance notes

We are a statutory consultee on planning applications that affect playing fields.

This means that any planning application that affects a playing field has to be referred to Sport England for comment by the local authority

It is our policy to object to any such application unless it meets one of our handful of exceptions.

Find out more about playing fields

Small sports clubs can find it difficult to get planning permission for improving their facilities. Yet we know poor quality facilities put people off playing sport.

So we have produced a guide to making a planning application that takes clubs, step by step through the process from reviewing the options to implementing the decision.

Download our planning application guide

The sports facility calculator estimates the amount of demand a given population creates for swimming pools and sports halls.

We developed it to help local authorities work out how much additional demand new developments, regeneration or population growth place on local sports amenities.

Load up the sports facility calculator

The planning contributions kitbag gives local authorities practical help and information aboutsecuring deals from developers.

It includes practical advice, tools for calculating need and real life case studies and best practice examples.

Find out more about the planning contributions kitbag.