Teamwork yields great result for community

The ancient Saxon town of Winchcombe nestles quietly in the Cotswolds, 10 miles from Cheltenham, its nearest neighbour. But its relative isolation hasn’t stopped Winchcombe from setting good examples in the area of civic teamwork.

Its six thousand residents have just gained from an unusual joint venture between its town council and the governors of Winchcombe School, which has resulted in the construction of a new £1.2m sports hub development including a full size floodlit 3G artificial pitch, new changing rooms, performing arts studio, and lecture rooms for both community and school use.

Joining forces
Winchcombe, like so many rural towns, is largely isolated outside business hours when there is no public transport to Cheltenham – at 10 miles away from the nearest town. Hence with the benefit of some Section 106 money, Winchcombe Town Council sought to provide new sports facilities for the local community, but was thwarted by the lack of any large enough open spaces.

At the same time the governors of the school, which occupies a 17-acre site in a beautiful location in open country on the edge of the town, also had plans to build a full size artificial pitch for its students.

In a small community it was only a matter of time before the two parties joined forces, with the school leasing two areas of its playing field to the town council and providing some 20 per cent of the funding, in return for the exclusive use of the facilities during school hours.

A joint steering group set about raising the remaining funds required from organisations including the Football Foundation, Gloucestershire County Council, Tewkesbury Borough Council, Gloucestershire Playing Fields Association and other local organisations.

Serendipity Strikes
By chance, the chair of governors of Winchcombe School is Peter Grimshaw who, as an original founder member of what is now the Tennis Court division, has been a keen member of SAPCA (Sports & Play Construction Association) since its beginning. His involvement brought in-house knowledge of sports construction and civil engineering to the project. Grimshaw also donated the services of his company to the joint venture. And so it was that Cheltenham-based Grimshaw Group came to design the new facilities and obtain planning permission, which was granted in 2009. To avoid any conflicts of interest, the company was excluded from tendering for any of the work.

Town councillors Kevin Willett and Ron Harrison, headteacher Neil Hall and Peter Grimshaw became the working group tasked with masterminding the construction phase, and they soon appointed chartered quantity surveyor Wood & Weir Limited as their professional project manager.

To reduce costs on such a diverse project, it was split into three separate contracts, with civil engineering contractors tendering for the new car/coach parking, building contractors for the building elements, and SAPCA pitch group members for the floodlit pitch (AGP). 

SAPCA consultants also tendered to develop the planning permission designs for the AGP and handle that tender process, site supervision and testing. Sports Labs Limited was duly appointed as consultant for the AGP and AP Thompson Sports Engineering Limited as the contractors to built it.

Complex site
Handling three separate contracts within the confines of an operational secondary school called for careful planning and co-ordination. Whilst certain local lobby groups called for a sand dressed carpet, suitable for hockey play to be installed, the Football Foundation grant required 3G.

In the event the selected carpet was Desso’s 50mm 3G with iDNA fibre which, on the Winchcombe pitch, subsequently passed on-site testing for FIH national hockey standards.

The new facility includes various novel concepts such as having only six 15m high lighting columns in due deference to the outstanding natural beauty of the area around the school site. The building also has segment shaped rooms that mirror an adjacent classroom/music school building. Heating for the new building is supplied by a ground-source-heat-pump drawing heat from beneath the school playing field.

The fruits of collaboration
Following the project’s completion earlier this year, the town council handed the operation of the sport hub over to a small group of trustees, who in turn appointed former Cheltenham Town FC captain John Finnigan as the development manager to run the new facilities.

Thanks to the far-sighted approach of both Winchcombe Town Council and Winchcombe School, both the community and the school have gained financially-viable, top class facilities that neither party on its own could have aspired to.

The work completed to date is only phase 1 of a ‘bigger dream’ and there can be little doubt that this successful partnership of town council and school governors has the potential to provide even more facilities to the benefit of both the community and school.

Across the UK there must be dozens of schools and smaller town councils with insufficient resources to build new sports facilities on their own, which could succeed if they followed the far-sighted Winchcombe model.

About SAPCA
SAPCA is the recognised trade association for the sports and play construction industry in the UK. Its role is to foster excellence, professionalism and continuous improvement throughout the industry, in order to provide the high quality facilities needed at all levels of sport, physical activity, recreation and play. It has over 240 corporate members from across the UK, all with a direct involvement in sports and play facility development, including contractors, manufacturers and suppliers, professional consultants and test laboratories, as well as sports governing bodies and related organisations.