General Requirements
No athletics facility and no floodlights. No further development once the pitches have been improved.
Develop the field using sensitive design by keeping pitches to a minimum to maximise green space available for informal use. Also build a lower height anti-vehicle fence rather than 8ft high security fence.
Stop overplaying the issues around security, vandalism and anti-social behaviour. Measures such as an anti-vehicle fence, build security into the changing rooms and having an on-site park-keeper (park rangers scheme being piloted by BCC at present) should help to address these issues. An 8ft security fence will not address the issues of vandalism, anti-social behaviour it will just move somewhere else. Is this really an answer?
Specific requirements
Respect the heritage of the field by allowing free informal leisure, recreation and sporting use of the field for any lawful activity that does not impinge on school use (as has been the case for many years).
Hours of access for pedestrians - 24 hours.
Hours of access for vehicles - 9am to 4pm to minimise impact on traffic in the area.
Affordable hire charges that are documented on the community use agreement (Hires charges should only relate to hire of a pitch for matches). These should be dependant on ability to pay and should not exclude people who cannot pay. These should be capped (inflation linked?) for a long period (many years/not months) in some way to stop drastic price rises happening. Hiring of the facility should also encourage local groups to use the pitches ahead of big paying organisations from outside the locality.
Appoint a community liaison officer with the following roles: To promote community use of the field, maintenance, pitch hire, complaints. Use could also include events such as fetes.
Reduce the amount of space taken up by car parking. Cars equal concrete therefore reducing green space. (Why is there a need for an 80 space car park + coach parking anyway. In the planning information submitted by the applicant to the development control committee 14/07/04 under a section entitled "Trip Generation & Travel Management" they stated "that for school related use (PE and games lessons), all trips to the site should be by walking or cycling").
Carry out genuine community consultation. We have asked approximately 130 local residents what they think, how many have you asked? Doing things like this help to build trust with the local community.
Allow proper community representation about decisions that relate to plans and future use of the field. This should include young people, local people and school representatives.
In addition set in place independent monitoring of the community use agreement that is implemented.