News

Lottery funding for new sports pitch

(3 April 2013)

Durham University's Maiden Castle sports facilities

Durham University has received a further boost to its multi-million pound sports facilities.

The University has successfully bid for £500,000 of National Lottery funding to install a new artificial grass pitch, bringing the total investment in sports facilities at its sites in Durham and Stockton over the last three years to almost £13 million.

The latest grant has been awarded from Sport England’s new Improvement Fund. Together with the existing facilities at the University’s Maiden Castle site on the edge of Durham City, the new rubber crumb-based pitch will enable it to offer additional playing hours.

Dr Peter Warburton OBE, Dean of Experience Durham, said: “Durham University is absolutely delighted to have received funding from Sport England to install a new artificial pitch in order to further develop rugby, football and lacrosse.

“The University is well known for its work with community partners and this additional development will allow us to do considerably more both internally and externally to develop these high profile sports across both the men’s and women’s games.”

It is hoped the new pitch will be available for use at the Maiden Castle site in September 2013.

Durham is the premier sporting university in the North of England and is currently ranked second in the British University and College Sport (BUCS) championships.

The new funding is just the latest in a significant tally of investment in sport at the University. In February 2012, it unveiled a £6.7m world-class sports facility at the Maiden Castle site, including a high performance training centre for rowing – which includes one of only three powered indoor rowing tanks in the UK. And two years earlier, a £5.5m sports centre was opened at the University’s Queen’s Campus in Stockton

With three quarters of people citing the quality of pitch surfaces as being important to their sporting experience, Sport England said its new Improvement Fund will improve these facilities for the benefit of thousands of people.

Sport England Property Director Charles Johnston said: “As the research shows, people have a better experience of sport when the facilities are good both on and off the pitch. These investments in artificial grass pitches will have a big impact on sport in local communities.”

With awards of between £150,000 and £500,000, 38 projects across England have shared in nearly £10 million of National Lottery funding from the first round of the Improvement Fund, announced on April 3.

Minister for Sport, Hugh Robertson, said: “Protecting and improving local sport facilities is an important part of the legacy from 2012. This National Lottery Improvement Fund will create thousands more sporting opportunities for communities across the country encouraging people to get active and take up sport.”

Between now and 2017, Sport England will invest £45 million of lottery funding through the Improvement Fund into medium-sized projects to improve grassroots sport facilities. Changing rooms and artificial grass pitches were chosen for the first round after they were identified by Sport England as improvements that could have an immediate impact on the number of people playing sport within a community.