Plans submitted for all-weather sports pitch in Uckfield

Plans have been submitted for an artificial turf pitch to be laid at Uckfield Community Technology College.

A planning application before Wealden Council says the scheme would make use of a poorly drained grass playing area south of the college and upgrade it to a “state of the art” all weather teaching and sports coaching facility.

This would serve the needs of the college, some of its feeder primary schools and provide a venue to be used by the community.

Documents with the application say that the learning and teaching on “invasion games”, particularly football, is severely disrupted by the effects of bad weather which leads to waterlogged grass areas and cancellation of planned lessons.

The unreliability of the condition of the college’s football pitches means many matches have to be played away resulting in increased transport costs and a limit to the number of games that can be played as students have to be transported by mini-bus.

“Currently the college is obliged to cram matches into the early part of the autumn and late spring rather than being able to spread them across the whole of Terms 1, 2, 3 and 4."

The proposed site of the pitch will allow for the provision of a 300m athletics track on the east side of the site as well as two 90 x 64m football pitches.

The current cricket square would be retained and the shot putt and long-triple jump facilities would be moved east of the proposed pitch.

Space on the west side of the site is retained on poorly draining earth for tennis facilities to be designed at a later date.

It is predicted that during the first year of operation 52,800 community users would play on the pitch. Of them 12,000 would be casual users and more than 40,000 “contracted” users, such as local clubs.

It is anticipated that by 2016/17 the total number of community users will be more than 60,000. These figures exclude college users. The pitch would be used Monday to Friday, 9am to 10pm, Saturdays and Bank Holidays, 8am to 9pm and Sundays 8am to 7pm.