Q&A

This is a campaign to create a dedicated training and coaching facility for the Club which will be a new home for female sports in Winchester.

We are an unincorporated, not for profit, all female grassroots football club comprising 3 ladies teams, 27 youth teams from U9 to U18 and 5 development groups in our U4 to U8 Sparrows training camps. These teams play home and away matches at the weekends across the region and at King George V playing fields in Winchester and the ladies play their matches at Charters Community Stadium. Training is spread across the area wherever we can secure time slots to play.

The interest in female participation in sports such as football has increased exponentially. Most existing facilities are poor quality grass pitches, which can support match play only during the day as they lack floodlighting. They also suffer from poor drainage, so are unplayable during winter months, and the changing and toilet facilities are inadequate. While this situation is less than ideal it is manageable, the real demand for a new purpose build facility is for supporting teams to train, which happens during the week and in the evenings involving all squads from all age groups.

We have considered this and had discussions with the landowner, however these are community playing fields with specific restrictive covenants on their use. The area is adjacent to the South Downs National Park which means we are not allowed to use floodlights which rules out evening games and training. The pitches are also not playable in the rain. Currently as community access fields administered by Winchester City Council we have to book the pitches similarly to all community sports that use the facility and only have guaranteed access for matchdays on a Saturday.

The planned new facility is a community use pavilion which will be used by all users of the King George V site. It has been commissioned by Winchester City Council as a replacement for two current community pavilions as neither of the current structures are fit for purpose or conform to any modern health and safety requirements for public use. The new community pavilion is a welcome facility for the site users for match days, however it will remain unused at other times as KGV is unsuitable for training purposes.

The Winchester City Flyers Ladies First team has a pitch hire arrangement to play home games at The Charters Community Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Currently being a single grass pitch, supporting both men and boys youth football, it is not able to accommodate additional matches due to the wear and tear grass pitches suffer from during the winter months. Certainly no training can take place on such a fragile surface.

Winchester Flyers is one of the largest and more influential female only sports Clubs in the UK. Hampshire is a strong centre for female sports. Our vision is to create home for female sports participation, a training home for Flyers and a centre of excellence for encouraging female participation in sports and sports coaching.

We are looking for land of around 15 Ha, ideally with good transport access and links, relatively flat with no restrictive planning constraints.

That depends on the progress we make in securing suitable land and support. We have planned a phased approach as our primary requirement is flood lit all weather training pitches. However we have a vision that would incorporate training pitches, changing and coaching facilities and parking. This would create a home for female sport participation in the region. This would include all aspects of the game, playing coaching, community engagement and administration.

The Club is financially stable and has a large and growing membership. It is very influential in running local female leagues, and has a strong track record of working with Hampshire FA to grow the game locally. There interest is here, the will is here and we believe that such a facility would be a real benefit to the whole area, both from a community and economic perspective. The need for and lack of leisure facilities has repeatedly been identified in local strategic planning reviews, going back a number of years and with a growing population the situation is becoming critical.

It is our intention to work with other sports clubs to create a facility that supports female sport across the Winchester District.

We already have the full support of The Football Foundation who have significant experience in building grass roots facilities such as this. Its hard to be specific at this stage as there are many unknowns, however we estimate the cost to be in the region of £5-£10m

The Football Foundation and Winchester City Council have funding available and we are confident that the Club would be able to raise match funding to complete the project. When the facility is built the intention is that there would be an entity created to run the facility as a not for profit entity, covering ongoing management and maintenance costs to ensure a sustainable future of the facility.