Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what progress she has made on (a) increasing the provision of and (b) improving sports pitches in the last five years.

We know that active people are fitter, happier and healthier - which is why in our new Sport Strategy - 'Get Active’ - we set out an ambitious strategy to boost our national health by getting 3.5 million extra active people by 2030.To help achieve this, Government is investing over £300 million between 2021 and 2025 to make essential facility improvements, so that communities have high-quality pitches to play on.

In 2021/22, 177 grassroots facilities projects across the UK were supported through the Football Foundation in England and the Football Associations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This includes the creation or resurfacing of over 80 artificial grass pitches, over 20 grass pitch improvements, and other projects such as changing rooms, floodlights and goalposts. Over 1,600 sites benefitted from funding in 2022/23 across a similar range of projects, improving both provision and quality of pitches.

2023/24 projects are currently being selected and we expect to publish this list of projects shortly.