Skip to content

Planning for sport

The planning system plays a crucial role in providing access to high-quality facilities so everyone can play sport and be physically active.

Our planning role and tools

This section includes:

  • Our Planning for Sport Guidance, which explains our role in the planning system
  • Planning tools: including our calculators, planning advice notes, the Facilities Planning Model and others
  • Links to our Active Design resources.

Read more

Young fencers watch a contest.
Young boy practicing American Football tackles using a cushion.

Playing fields policy

To help protect the spaces where people get active, local planning authorities are required by law to consult us on planning applications they receive that affect playing fields. Our Playing Fields Policy and Guidance sets out our approach to responding to such applications.

Read more

Planning applications

This section explains how we assess and respond to planning applications and what are statutory and non-statutory roles are. The section also includes:

  • FAQs 
  • Our model planning conditions
  • CUA template
  • Our 'Making a Planning Application: A guide for community sports clubs'.

Read more

Young girls jumping on long trampoline.
Young woman learning to ride skate board in skate park.

Assessing Needs and Playing Pitch Strategy guidance

This section includes our guidance documents for assessing communities’ needs for sport and recreation facilities under paragraph 103 of the National Planning Policy Framework (e.g Playing Pitch Strategies and Built Facilities Strategies).

Read more

Sign up to our newsletter

You can find out exactly how we'll look after your personal data, but rest assured we’ll only use it to make sure you receive our newsletter, to understand how you interact with our newsletter, and to provide administrative information about our newsletter.