Sport and leisure – future plans

Portsmouth has been identified as an area that has a shortfall of Artificial Grass Pitches (AGPs) to support the development of youth and adult football in the city.

Future plans for King George V playing fields

We are working with the Hampshire FA on a funding bid to the Premier League, The FA and the Government’s Football Foundation to provide a football hub at King George V playing fields in Cosham. We are applying for funding to add to the £1.2 million which has already been allocated to the scheme.

The scheme would provide a new pavilion with changing facilities, café space and toilets, as well as the AGPs. The two AGPs would be marked up to provide a variety of pitch options, such as:

• 2 full size 100 x 64m pitches
• 4 9v9 pitches
• 6 7v7 pitches
• 12 5v5 pitches

Having a range of smaller pitches will help meet the needs of youth football matches and training and would enable more children to take part in the sport. There will still be plenty of grass football pitches available in the rest of the playing fields and we are considering what other improvements we could make, such as additional bins or seating.

A planning application will be submitted towards the end of the year.

We recently asked for your views on the proposal. The survey is being analysed with a report being published soon.

We’re proposing to bring community, sports and swimming facilities together in one new modern and ecologically-sound hub at Bransbury Park. Earlier this year we asked for your views to further shape our plans.

We’ve now spoken to users of Bransbury Park, Eastney Community Centre, Eastney Swimming Pool and Wimbledon Park Sports Centre, as well as local residents and non-users, to help us decide the right mix of facilities.

We also received 2,208 responses to our survey. Thank you. We were pleased that the majority of responses were from local residents, with 74% from the PO4 postcode and 43% from the roads surrounding Bransbury Park.

Read the results here

Past consultation results

At the end of 2020 we asked for your views on whether we should spend money set aside to help keep aging Eastney Swimming Pool and Wimbledon Park sports centre as they currently are on a brand new facility at Bransbury Park instead. The majority of residents (63%) supported this idea, so we gave the go ahead to develop plans further.

View Nov/Dec 2020 consultation results

Eastney Swimming Pool and Wimbledon Park Sports Centre

No decisions have been made on the futures of Eastney Swimming Pool or Wimbledon Park Sport Centre. Further public consultation will take place for both sites – details will be added here.

The first phase of the £2.5m redevelopment of The Pyramids Centre is now complete with the opening of the brand new adventure play and trampoline facility called Exploria! Find out more and book here.

A major expansion of the already-successful gym is currently underway.

Keeping the Pyramids leisure pool was not an option. To fully refurbish it and re-open as a leisure pool would have cost around £13m over the next 10 years and we did not have the money to do this. In addition, the Pyramids building was originally designed to last 30 years and is now 30 years old and cannot go on indefinitely. The only options left were to close the centre or find a way to keep it open before the building inevitably reaches the end of its life.

The new plans will encourage more residents and visitors of all ages to use the Pyramids to get active and have fun, and help to secure its future for a few more years before we consult on what will eventually replace it, as explained in the Seafront Masterplan.

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