Brimmington Park Sports

Brimmington Park Sports Centre Hub

Background and strategy

Our Playing Pitch Strategy and the Football Foundation’s Southwark Local Football Facility Plan have identified a need for more high-quality all-weather football pitches in the borough.

In London, finding locations for new large sports facilities such as sports pitches suitable for football is unusual. Therefore, it was recommended that existing facilities in poor condition should be upgraded and made better use of.

To help meet this need at Brimmington Park, we've proposed to:

• upgrade the quality and increase the number of football pitches
• provide a sports centre with changing rooms

The sports facility

Currently, there are two poor-quality carpet football pitches and a tarmac area. The sports centre/changing rooms building is closed and sits derelict.

The plans

The plans ^{(PDF, 1.3mb)} to refurbish the sports facility in Brimmington Park include:

• the new high-quality 3G Astroturf all-weather football pitches will have the potential to be configured as five 5-a-side pitches
• the refurbished sports centre will provide changing rooms, an event/activity room and have a low-energy, sustainable heating system
• sound barriers which will reduce noise disturbance to local residences
• a free-to-use Toro interactive football facility
• removal of hard surfaces and an increase in green space
• enhanced plants that are great for wildlife
• more trees
• improved entrances to the park

Public consultation

The first round of public consultation was held in autumn 2019. View the report on the results ^{(PDF, 2mb)}.

The second public consultation was held in October 2020. View the report on the results.

Next steps

The design is currently being updated and we will share it as soon as possible. 

Planning permission is required and after the planning application has been submitted, you’ll get a further opportunity to comment during the statutory consultation period.

Please join the mailing list if you wish to be notified when the planning application has been submitted.

For more information or to join the project mailing list, email LeisureProjects@southwark.gov.uk

Management of the new facility, community and free-use

Respondents to the first consultation asked for more information about how the facility will be managed. However, we currently do not have this information. Once construction has started, we'll have a better idea of the date it will be ready. The two options for the management of the facility are to lease to an external provider or to be managed by the council.

Concern was raised that the sports pitches would always require costly fees in order to use them. This is not the case. Fees paid by those who can afford it, for organised matches such as leagues, will offset free and low-cost sessions for local people. Should the facility be run by an external operator, they will be contracted to provide free and low-cost sessions.

This gives everyone an equal opportunity to use a high-tech and quality facility, when some may not otherwise have been able to afford it.

An indicative programme ^{(PDF, 24kb)} provides an idea of how this may be timetabled. We expect there will be capacity for free use at most off-peak times, as shown by the indicative programme.

The programme also contains a significant amount of community use. These sessions will be targeted to ensure wider participation and will be subsidised to ensure low cost. These include:

• women and mixed sessions football
• football coaching
• junior football
• disability football
• crime diversion such as Kicks
• walking football

As well as community rate sessions for community clubs and free kickabout sessions for the local community, anyone can book the facility for a match. Peak prices will be below the market rate.

The interactive Toro pitch will be free to use at any time.

Page last updated: 10 April 2024