Decision details

Release of S106 Formal Sports Contributions for installation of electronic access gate at John Pears Recreation Ground tennis courts

Decision Maker: Cabinet Member for Environment & Service Delivery

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: Yes

Is subject to call in?: Yes

Purpose:

John Pears Recreation Ground in Ashurst Wood is a very popular recreation ground used by members of the public, Ashurst Wood Junior Football Club and Ashurst Wood Community Tennis Club.

 

Ashurst Wood Community Tennis Club uses the tennis courts on site and provides the opportunity for local residents and the neighboring community to play tennis. They offer coaching opportunities for both adults and juniors, as well as holding club tournaments.

 

Johns Pears is managed under a Rural Management Agreement (RMA) with Ashurst Wood Village Council (AWVC). They manage all the bookings and collection of income for the use of all the facilities on the site. For this they receive a payment equal to 20% of all the income received over the year.

 

Officers have been working with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) over the past two years to identify ways to increase tennis court usage at all the Council’s park facilities as part of a bigger project. Feedback from the Village Council, club members, members of the public and the LTA shows that availability and accessing the courts is not an easy process and that it is potentially putting a lot of people off booking the courts.

 

The ClubSpark booking system won the “Best Participation Technology” at the Sports Technology Awards last year and is used extensively by other Local Authorities and Private Clubs to manage their courts. This software allows members to create their own accounts (which our previous online system could not do) to speed up booking times, allows them to cancel bookings (which our previous system could not do) and also have it as an app on their mobile phone for quick and easy bookings. This system went live on 1 October 2020 across all the Council’s park tennis court sites and has been positively received by users.

 

The next stage of this project is to link ClubSpark to a new electronic gate system, so that once a booking has been made via ClubSpark the hirer is sent a unique code that they use to enter the courts for their specific hire period. Currently we have coded access gates which have to be manually changed every 2-3 weeks by officers. This is very time consuming and does not stop people accessing the courts multiple times once they have the code.

 

The Council has recently been successful in securing LTA funding to put in electronic access gates at tennis courts at Victoria Park in Haywards Heath and St Johns Park in Burgess Hill, which we hope to implement after John Pears is complete; and it is proposed to roll the technology out across all remaining sites as funding becomes available.

 

The system would have ongoing maintenance and data costs of £601 per year, which will be funded from increased income as a result of improved usage levels.

Decision:

Publication date: 25/11/2020

Date of decision: 25/11/2020

Effective from: 03/12/2020

Accompanying Documents: