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Outdoor surfaces

These pages explain the requirements and give practical advice on building and maintaining playing fields and sports pitches, as well as the design selection process of material for a range of outdoor sports surfaces.

Artificial sports surfaces

Our Artificial Surfaces for Outdoor Sport guide looks at the use of artificial grass pitches, needle punch play surfaces, and polymeric surfaces. It gives essential information used by national governing bodies (NGBs), developers and planners to meet quality standards for construction and maintenance of natural turf and typical pitch layouts.

We advise on a range of facilities, whether they’re located in new or existing schools, local parks, sports clubs or as part of larger regeneration projects. The guidance covers: 

  • The benefits of various surface materials 
  • Design concepts 
  • Common technical expressions 
  • Technical classifications of various playing surfaces 
  • Suitability of surfaces for various levels of sports at training or performance levels 
  • Other sources of information and more detailed advice.

Our guide on Artificial Surfaces for Outdoor Sport replaces our original design guide, Multi-Use Games Areas Volume 1. 

You can access a simple, consistent methodology and approach to selecting the right type of artificial grass surface for playing hockey, football, rugby union and rugby league with our guidance on selecting the right surface below. 

Our guidance on Comparative Sizes of Sports Pitches and Courts, with separate documents for indoor and outdoor sport, provides a comparison of space requirements for a range of sports and reflect the most up-to-date NGB facility requirements.

These documents have been fully endorsed by the NGBs at the time of publication.

Volunteering football coach running drills

Artificial grass pitch layouts

Artificial grass pitches (AGPs) are a key part of the modern sporting landscape and provide valuable facilities for local communities. This guidance expands on the general technical advice already made available on our website and gives details of:

  • Acoustic implications associated with such facilities 
  • Acoustic research programme involving detailed analysis of relevant noise guidance documents and site testing in a range of locations
  • Appropriate noise criteria and assessment methods
  • Practical measures that can be applied to reduce noise in particularly sensitive areas.

You can look through a range of layouts and plans of artificial grass pitches for football, hockey and rugby along with briefing notes to cover the recycling of artificial grass carpets and artificial flat green bowls. 

Case studies

This Coram Field project is an example of the modernisation of an artificial pitch to 3G long pile carpet. The works were carried out and managed by our framework contractor and consultants.

The work on the Blackbridge Athletic Track in Gloucester involved the refurbishment of an existing athletics track, including repositioning of the long/triple jump runway, widening of the main straight to eight lanes, replacement of the porous artificial surfacing to the track and more.

You can find more of our case studies below:

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