Member

As the Government look to streamline planning, there is a risk that access to physical activity, despite its social value contributions, will be inadvertently impacted in the push for new residential developments. Without specifying a protection of physical activity in the NPPF, there is the danger that public leisure facilities will be lost as community centres and drivers of health and well-being. That is particularly so because it is a discretionary rather than compulsory line of spend for local government. The intention to remove Sport England as a statutory consultee highlights this threat to physical activity facilities. Greater clarification of terminology will be required to ensure that land for physical activity provision is not considered to be low-value land, and therefore at risk of being developed.