Campaigning

Safeguarding individual recreational places across the UK is one of the ways in which we protect outdoor recreational space. The other strand of FIT’s core work involves campaigning to achieve greater statutory protection for a broad range of sites through legislative and planning policy change. Our campaigning has been extremely successful over the years and some of our key achievements include:

• Reducing the minimum size of playing field that requires consultation before it can be developed from 04.ha to 0.2ha ensuring that smaller sites – junior pitches, tennis courts etc – can no longer fall below the radar
• Strengthening the legal protection of School Playing Fields in England
• Securing rate relief for Community Amateur Sports Clubs
• Ensuring the Charities Act included the promotion of sport as a charitable endeavour
• These achievements are good steps forward but more has to be done and that is why we continue to safeguard individual sites through Deeds of Dedication until such a time that it is no longer necessary to do so.

Future Goals

England

• Ensuring that the National Planning Policy Framework does not emasculate the policy protections for open space found in provisions of the previous PPG17 
• Working towards Sport England reviewing planning applications relating to playing fields that have been used as such in the past
• Ensuring that planning applications made by a local authority for development of its own land are not decided by that authority – thus avoiding any potential conflict of interest
• Ensuring that Fields in Trust is a statutory consultee required to be consulted on any planning application affecting children’s play areas and other non-sporting recreation spaces (in much the same way that Sport England is consulted now for planning applications relating to playing pitches) and ensuring that clear criteria are established to govern when such development should be resisted 
• Seeking an extension of the School Premises Regulations and Section 77 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1988 so that academies and free schools, and any other schools maintained directly by Central Government, are covered by the same legislation and regulations that apply to LEA funded schools
• Investigating the need for legislation to support and clarify matters relating to the protection of playing fields and open space generally through contractual obligations, specifically to include the playing fields already protected by Fields in Trust  as King George’s Fields and through other grant aid programmes, including then Carnegie United Kingdom Trust funding initiative of the 1920s and 1930s
• Resisting efforts by local authorities to introduce charges for children’s play facilities that have been previously free at the point of delivery in public open spaces; and resisting efforts by public authorities and others to introduce charges for sport and leisure facilities which are not affordable in public parks and other open spaces 
• Promoting greater use by the community of School Playing Fields

Scotland

• To continue to improve our effectiveness by working in partnership with likeminded organisations to assist the Scottish Government to achieve its ‘national outcomes.’
• Strengthening the national planning guidelines (SPP) to better protect outdoor spaces for sport, recreation and play.
• Ensuring that there is public access to all school sports facilities in Scotland at a cost that is affordable.
• Ensuring that there is a statutory consultation process for proposed developments on all outdoor recreational and play spaces (similar to current sports fields consultation process).
• In partnership with others, working towards a children’s play strategy for Scotland.
• Moving outdoor spaces for sport, recreation and play up the political agenda

Wales

• Work towards achieving  improved statutory protection of playing fields
• Strengthen the rules governing the sale of school playing fields in Wales, so that educational consent, as well as planning permission, is necessary Good
• Promote the need for and  development of a database of all playing fields in Wales