Sport 'Domesday Book' in slow lane

By Ollie Stone-Lee BBC News Online political staff

The project will help people find their nearest sports grounds

It sounded easy. A "Domesday Book" of all England's sporting facilities to show where and when people could play their favourite sports.

It is perhaps a sign of the complexity of English sport that the project has already taken twice as long as the year William I took to compile the original Domesday Book of who owned what in his Norman realm.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell used her first major speech on sports in August 2001 to unveil the plan, making it a priority for making a real difference in grass roots sport.

So how far have the plans progressed?

Field finder

Sport England was entrusted with the task of producing this great internet database which will allow people to tap in their postcode and find, for example, where they can swim at 7am on a Sunday.

Over the past two years, Sport England has been working on that vision but with the agency undergoing restructuring itself, the scheme has not been top priority.

Finding the funding necessary to compile the database - and ensure it can be kept up-to-date - has also taken time.

Sport England have been taking their begging bowl round government departments, but without real success.

The new "Domesday Book" will be higher-tech than William I's efforts

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Education and Skills and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are involved in the scheme.

But the funding is essentially coming from Sport England and the Lottery's New Opportunities Fund.

There is already a database which covers some sports facilities and the experience of trying to keep that up-to-date made Sport England slightly hesitant about the Domesday scheme.

'No white elephant'

Nick Evans, senior strategic planner at the agency, told BBC News Online: "We did not want to create another kind of white elephant that wasn't going to be used. We also need to ensure it's updated.

"It's easier now that we have a lot newer technology. If we can offer this information back to local authorities, they will help keep it up to date."

Private firms have just been appointed to produce the "Domesday Book" - rather more complicated perhaps than a Norman king ordering his men out into the country.

Jowell made the scheme a priority for grass roots sport

Ms Jowell wants something to show for the project by next June, with a further stage developed by spring 2005.

Exactly what the first stage will include is still under discussion, with ministers likely to push for as much as possible.

Mr Evans says: "We are saying be realistic about what we can actually deliver."

The primary aim for the end product, he explained, was simple - giving the public a single gateway to discover where they can play sport.

Planning problems

The existing sports database allows postcode searches but essentially only for local council-owned facilities, not private sector halls and pitches or those open to the public at schools.

Including private sector infrastructure is a significant move.

Mr Evans says middle class people are using more private leisure centres and recent price falls have brought them into direct competition with publicly run facilities.

More people are now using private sector swimming pools

But the "Domesday Book" is aimed at being more than only a resource for sporting enthusiasts itching to pull on a tracksuit or don their swimming costume.

It is designed also to focus public investment in sports in a way that has often been woefully lacking.

"There is a danger that we can waste public money if we have the same facilities being built a few hundred yards down the road from each other, as has happened in the past," says Mr Evans.

Knowledge gaps

Efforts have been hampered by the myriad of definitions of sports facilities used across the public sector - yes, there really are different views on what counts as a swimming pool.

By getting public bodies working off a common template and a definitive list of what is out there, they hope to get more targeted sports planning.

"We are then trying to use that information to make future investment decisions in sports," says Mr Evans.

Census techniques, aerial photos and officials sent out to search out sports facilities local councils quite often know nothing about are all part of the work.

Pioneers

Sport England says it would be impossible to cover every sport at the start of the project.

So the chosen facilities for the first stage are swimming pools, sports halls, synthetic turf pitches, indoor bowls, indoor tennis, golf and, for 2005, playing fields.

"That's mainly strategic in terms of their position in being big land users, and we're putting a lot of investment across government into these facilities so it's important to know where we're putting them," says Mr Evans.

Asked what the process tells us about the state of sport in England in 2003, Mr Evans replies: "It just shows there is a huge variety of sports facilities out there and not everyone knows where they are or who owns them."

Having counted England's sports fields, the key test for the project will be its success in getting more people to use them.