If you would like to find out more about the Facilities Planning
Model (FPM), please contact your Sport England local office.
The
FPM
is a
computer model (developed and used on license from Edinburgh
University), which helps to assess the strategic provision of
community sports facilities. So far the work has
concentrated on the major community sports facilities of sports
halls, swimming pools, synthetic turf pitches & indoor bowls
centres. Development of the model is underway to include
Indoor Tennis Centres.
The Model has been developed as a means of:
- Assessing requirements for different types of community sports
facilities on a local, regional or national scale
- Helping local authorities determine an adequate level of sports
facility provision to meet their local needs
- Testing ‘what if’ scenario’s in provision and changes in
demand, this includes testing the impact of opening, relocating and
closing facilities and the impact population changes would have on
the needs of the sports facilities.
In its simplest form the model seeks to assess whether the
capacity of existing facilities for a particular sport are capable
of meeting local demand for that sport taking into account how far
people are prepared to travel to a facility. In order to
estimate the level of sports facility provision in an area, the
model compares the number of facilities (supply), by the demand for
that facility (demand) that the local population will produce.
The level of participation is estimated using national
participation rates and applying them to the number of people who
live in the local area. See section below
The model can be used to test scenarios, by suggesting what
impact a new facility would have, or the closure of a facility, to
the overall level of facility provision. It can also take
account and model the impact of changes in population, for example,
from major housing development.
How does the model work
In its simplistic from, the model is a supply / demand analysis.
It estimates how much demand for a facility there is within
an area, calculates how much supply of that facility there is
within that area, and then puts these two elements together to show
how much demand is met, not met, and how much supply is used and
not used, taking into account how far people are prepared to travel
to a facility.
This supply/demand analysis is very similar to other spatial
planning models, such as retail modeling.
To break this down further, demand is people wanting to use a
facility, such as wanting to go swimming, and supply is the amount
of swimming pools. The only way you can compare swimming
visits with water space, is by using the same type of unit.
How the model does this is by converting swims (demand) and
waterspace (supply) into Visits per Week in the Peak Period
(vpwpp). The model works on the times when most people
want to participate; this is called the Peak Period.
The model uses census information at output area level to help
establish the profile of the population, including, age, gender,
access cars,
IMD
scores. These are all used in the model to estimate the potential
and nature demand for sports facilities. The model uses the
information on the road network (Integrated Transport Network) to
estimate how people are prepared to travel. This
spatial interaction between demand and supply is essential in
helping to understand whether the current supply of sports
facilities are in the right place to meet the potential demand
within your local area.
Prescriptive not Predictive
An important feature of the Model is that it is prescriptive and
not predictive in that it does not provide precise estimates of the
use of proposed facilities. Rather it prescribes an appropriate
level of provision for any defined area in relation to demand and
which reflects national expectations and policies.
Because the demand parameters are based on achieved levels of
participation Sport England believes this level of provision
represents good practice rather than some unattainable ideal.
In other words the levels of use/demand/throughput visits are
what could be produced based on what has been observed has happened
at existing facilities.
However, the Model does not predict actual usage of facilities:
this is determined by range of factors, not least management and
promotional policies, programming and the quality or attractiveness
of the facility concerned. Nonetheless, the
FPM
will generate broad
estimates of potential throughput which may be useful when
considering policy options.
If you would like to find out more about the
FPM
, please contact your Sport
England local office.