Decision - Playing Pitch Strategy 2025 - 2041

Brighton and Hove Cabinet Decided 26 Jun 2025 · effective 5 Jul 2025 approved GET /api/coverage

Decision maker

Cabinet

Report author

Laura Spence

Published

27 Jun 2025

Reference

7457

As published

the council's own words, unedited

This reports seeks approval of a new Playing Pitch Strategy for 2025 - 2041. The strategy is an assessment of cricket, football, hockey and rugby playing pitches across Brighton & Hove and reviews current and future demand to enable strategic planning of the city's sport pitches.

1) That Cabinet approves and adopts the Playing Pitch Strategy 2025 – 2041 as set out in Appendix 1. 2) That cabinet approves all of the recommendations (set out in 4.6 below), including the longer term need for more pitch provision, in all future place planning.

Parsed from the document

gpt-5.6-luna-2026-07-09 · 48074/2802 tokens · 16690ms · parsed 9 Sep 2026 15:39

Everything below was read out of a PDF by a model It is useful and it is not authoritative. The document it came from is linked in the rail, and where the two disagree the document is right.

The strategy assesses playing-pitch supply and demand across Brighton & Hove through 2041 for cricket, football, hockey and rugby. It recommends protecting existing facilities, improving poor-quality pitches and ancillary facilities, securing community access to education sites, and developing additional pitches and artificial grass facilities to meet current and future demand.

Recommendation

Retain the overall quantity of playing-pitch land and facilities; protect existing sites through planning policy; secure long-term community access and Community Use Agreements; improve pitch maintenance, drainage, pavilions and changing facilities; deliver planned new artificial and non-turf pitches; increase community use of education sites; and review the action plan annually, with a full strategy review after five years.

Financial impact

Almost £35,000 was invested by Sussex Cricket Foundation through the devolved ECB County Grants Fund into Brighton & Hove clubs over the last three years. A national investment of over £12 million is associated with the RFU Impact 25 programme; no specific council budget or total strategy implementation cost is stated.

Ward affected

city-wide

Decision maker

Brighton & Hove City Council Playing Pitch Strategy Steering Group

Stakeholders named

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Brighton & Hove City Councillocal sports clubs and teamswomen and girls participating in sportchildren and young peopleschools and collegesSport Englandnational governing bodies of sportresidents and community users

Next steps

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Progress priority pitch, pavilion, drainage, resurfacing and community-access projects subject to funding, planning and feasibility.
Develop the planned non-turf pitches at Aldrington Recreation Ground, Braypool Recreation Ground and East Brighton Park, subject to planning.
Investigate and secure Community Use Agreements at education sites.
Review and update the action plan and priority projects annually through the Strategy Steering Group.
Monitor participation, team-generation rates, pitch capacity and demand.
Complete a full review of the strategy after five years, or after three years if annual monitoring does not take place.

Precedents

not built

"Decided elsewhere" is not built Finding the same decision in other councils needs semantic matching over decision text, which is part of the search rewrite. Until then, the council's own decisions list is the way through.