Portsmouth’s Charles Dickens Junior School’s long wait for modern sport and arts facilities had a happy storybook ending after it was awarded funding from the Space for Sport and Arts programme.

The new facility includes an all-weather multi-use sports pitch, youth centre, multi-media suite and fitness suite. There is also room for rehearsals, a messy arts area and a performance arts space in addition to a sports hall and changing rooms.

Space for Sport and Arts is a £134m programme which has funded almost 300 new or modernised facilities for sport and arts at primary schools situated in deprived areas all over the country. Administered by Sport England it aims to enhance the opportunities for children to participate in sport and arts activities. It is part Lottery and part Government funded and is backed by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Department of Education and Skills, Arts Council England, and the Big Lottery Fund, as well as Sport England.

Council leader Phil Shaddock said the people of the city’s densely built-up Buckland district, which is in the top ten per cent of deprived wards in the country, had been crying out for extra youth facilities for years.

“This will be a terrific facility and is tremendous news for the schools, offering their pupils the state-of-the-art facilities that they badly want and so richly deserve.

Charles Dickens Junior School factfile  

• The total cost of the project was £1.4m with some of the money provided by the Government’s Single Regeneration Budget and Portsmouth City Council
  
• A digital recording studio is among the facilities provided at the new centre
  
• The Space for Sport and Arts programme contributed £500,000 towards the project costs.