WIREDGOV

Grassroots football facilities are set to benefit from over £17m worth of investment from the Premier League & The FA Facilities Fund’s latest funding round.

In addition to £5.6m of funding provided by the Premier League, The FA and Sport England, a further £12.1m in partnership funding has been generated to support grassroots facilities.

The Fund aims to improve the experience for regular grassroots players and attract new players by providing more high quality facilities, coupled with the best possible age-appropriate coaching.

Managed and delivered by the Football Foundation, a total of £17.7m will be invested across 80 grassroots projects in this window.

Nick Bitel, Sport England Chair, said: “Sport England is committed to helping people develop a lifelong sporting habit. This means ensuring they have a good experience when playing sport by providing good facilities in which to play on.

“By working in partnership with the Premier League, The FA, DCMS, through the Football Foundation, we are ensuring that clubs and communities across the country can offer first-class facilities that provide a good sporting experience to keep players coming back time and time again.”

This latest investment follows on from two previous tranches of funding in May 2014 and October 2014. Those rounds of funding yielded £44.8m of investment and saw 235 grassroots facilities projects benefit.

The latest round will help develop new and upgrade existing community sports facilities with floodlit, all-weather third-generation (3G) artificial grass pitches (AGPs) and modern changing rooms.

Richard Scudamore, Chief Executive of the Premier League, said: ““These new sites are hubs of their communities, used by schools and local teams, and enable more people to enjoy our national game each week purely for the love of it. Many of the facilities are also used by Premier League and other professional clubs for their excellent community work.”