Community Sport and Recreation Facilities at Broyle Gate Farm

This page provides a dated list of updated for the project to develop Community Sport and Recreation Facilities at Broyle Gate Farm.

Summary

A recent Planning Appeal decision has been made to grant outline planning permission for the building of 100 houses (40% affordable) and extensive Community Sports and Recreation Facilities on the land adjacent to Ringmer Kings Academy.

These facilities are to be built by Croudace and then offered to RACLT free of charge, to hold on behalf of the Ringmer Community in perpetuity. Croudace will also provide a substantial maintenance fund (c.£1.3million) to cover future maintenance costs.

In order that RACLT can be in a position to take up this offer, RACLT need to gather a lot of information regarding the nature of the facilities that would meet the needs of our community, so that we can develop robust plans for how we might manage and support these facilities. These are expected to include a 3G all weather pitch for football and rugby, cricket nets, tennis courts, outdoor gym and children’s play area.

A working group has been formed to progress this opportunity and to ensure the services developed are in the best interest of the community.

Updates

The updates are provided by the appointed RACLT Board Member on the working group, Gavin May except where explicitly stated otherwise. They are provided in order of newest at the top.

10th January 2023

GM met with representatives of Kings Academy to discuss the possibilities of working with them to deliver a much larger sporting hub. This would also include looking at the viability of the Swimming Pool and taking their existing tennis courts and refurbing them and making them all weather with floodlights. We would also look at completing all drainage for the rest of the schools playing fields and cover this in our grant application.

So in summary we have their permission to engage with ESCC and start the process on how we can work together.

6th January 2023

A meeting was called between Croudace land buyer, their delivery manager and also the MD of Slaters who design and build sports facilities – Max Pengelly, the RACLT chair was also in attendance.  RACLT  now know for sure what we need to do and what we are working towards.

Timelines are as follows:

• The Croudace development is now passed any JR period.
• Croudace are in legal discussions with the land owner and expect to purchase the site by end of April 2023.
• They will spend the rest of this year pulling together all of the information to answer all conditions and reserved matters application will be in.
• They expect a further 6 -12 months before any works can start – so we have 24 months.
• They will be moving forward with full plans for their outline scheme which leaves us with what we have approved as outline. However we are free to change this once we take ownership of the land so it does leave us with plenty of options.

Plenty of people have mentioned a Sports Hall would be great  and this will be possible with an idea Slatters came up with and I will go through this in detail at the next board meeting.

The RACLT working group have meetings next week with Kings Academy to discuss their use of new facilities, their thoughts on what is needed and the possibilities of a wider scheme.

Ringmer Cricket Club and Ringmer Amateur Football Club have also been spoken to.  The governors at each school will also be updated.