Section 7.5 does not provide any detailed guidance to provide clarity and transparency on the Council’s approach to securing developer contributions for indoor sports facilities other than advising that developments will be expected to contribute proportionately towards the provision of additional facilities and signposting to the Indoor Sports Facilities Strategy for identifying projects. Sport England would have expected the SPD to have provided advice on the following matters:
• Quantifying the need for new indoor sports facilities;
• Identifying whether the identified need can be met by existing facilities;
• Determining whether provision should be made on-site or off-site;
• Identifying how developer contributions should be calculated;
• Determining the projects that developer contributions will be secured towards (where off-site provision is made).

To assist local authorities, Sport England has published its CIL and Planning Obligations Advice Note (2018) https://www.sportengland.org/how-we-can-help/facilities-and-planning/planning-for-sport/community-infrastructure-levy-and-planning-obligations-advice-note which provides detailed advice on how the above matters should be considered and the appendix includes examples of how the process could typically work in practice. It should be noted that this advice note will be updated to account for the implications of the 2019 CIL Regulation amendments as the note is no longer up-to-date in this respect. In terms of calculating the demand generated by new development and the cost of meeting this demand (which can be used as a basis for calculating developer contributions), unless the Council has developed an alternative local approach which is responsive to the Council’s evidence base and would accord with the local plan’s policy, the NPPF and the CIL Regulations, Sport England would advocate the use of its established Sports Facilities Calculator (SFC) for calculating the demand for indoor sports facilities. The SFC was used as part of the Council’s Indoor Sports Facilities Strategy for estimating future demand and is used by many local authorities for estimating the demand for sports facilities generated by new developments and the capital cost of meeting this demand. The calculator has also been used in recent years for providing advice to the District Council on the demand for indoor sports facilities generated by major residential developments. Details of the SFC are on our website at https://www.sportengland.org/how-we-can-help/facilities-and-planning/planning-for-sport/sports-facility-calculator

It is therefore requested that section 7.5 is amended to provide more detailed advice covering the matters identified above. This will help ensure that the approach set out in the SPD is consistent with the tests in Regulation 122 of the CIL Regulations and would reduce the risk of challenge in practice. It would also provide greater clarity and transparency for all parties involved in the process.

Furthermore, paragraph 7.5.2 signposts to a series of management and programming actions in the Indoor Sports Facilities Strategy and advises that this should be used to identify projects for future developer contributions. However, it is the list of site specific projects in the strategy’s action plan that are relevant to this rather than management and programming related actions. This should be corrected.

Sport England would be happy to provide further advice to the Council to assist in addressing the matters raised above. For information, in terms of recent good practice by other local authorities in terms of the approach taken towards sport in SPDs covering planning obligations, as a local example I would signpost to East Hertfordshire District Council’s adopted SPD on Open Space, Sport and Recreation https://www.eastherts.gov.uk/planning-building/planning-policy/supplementary-planning-documents.