Stars urge UK government not to scrap Sport England brake on playing field selloff
Sports playing fields and facilities in England are at risk of being built over en masse with devastating consequences for local communities, sports stars and governing bodies have warned.The former England footballer Jill Scott along with Olympic gold medallists Mo Farah, Alex Yee and Matthew Pinsent, are among 88 signatories to an open letter saying they are “deeply concerned” about proposed government planning reforms, and say they would hit poorest communities hardest.The letter, which has also been signed by the Football Association, the RFU, the LTA and UK Athletics, comes amid proposals to end Sport England’s statutory right to be consulted on housing developments on playing fields as part of the government’s plans to hit its target of building 1.5m homes.“We are deeply concerned that proposed planning reforms could remove the statutory protections that help safeguard England’s playing fields and sports facilities,” the letter warns.
“These spaces are not just playing fields – they are vital infrastructure for health and wellbeing, community sport, and children’s play.Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'.If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version.In the Guardian app, tap the Profile settings button at the top right, then select Notifications.Turn on sport notifications.
“Playing fields are irreplaceable.Once built on, they are gone forever, and Sport England’s statutory consultee role is an important line of defence.Weakening this protection risks accelerating the loss of the very spaces that make grassroots sport and physical activity possible, at a time when participation is growing and demand has never been higher.”The letter adds: “This is about social justice.The people who need green space the most often have the least access.
Without these protections, the health and wellbeing of communities will suffer.”About 10,000 playing fields were sold off in the 80s and 90s before protections were introduced in 1996 and 2001.Sport England’s figures also show it protected more than 1,000 playing fields in 2021-2022.However that looks set to change, unless a public consultation that runs to 13 January is able to persuade the government to change its mind.Fields in Trust, which put together the letter, has found that almost half of Britain already lives more than a 10-minute walk from a playing field, with the poorest areas continuing to lose most green spaces to development or closure.
Scott, the Fields in Trust president, urged the government to listen to the warnings from across sport.“Too many communities risk losing these very spaces,” she said.“The playing fields where children first learn to play, the parks where families spend Sunday afternoons, the pitches for weekend kickabouts between friends.I wouldn’t be where I am today without that green space in Sunderland, where I spent countless hours as a kid, and every child deserves that same chance.“I urge the government to listen carefully.
We’re not asking for the impossible.We’re asking them to protect what already exists, for the generations who will come after us.”The government has been approached for comment.This month a spokesperson said: “There are already strong protections in place for playing fields which we are proposing to keep and we are investing £400m into grassroots sport.Sport England declined to comment.
The Guide #222: From Celebrity Traitors to The Brutalist via Bad Bunny – our roundup of the culture that mattered in 2025
It’s time to look back on a year of Traitors and Sinners, of Bad Bunnies and Such Brave Girls, with the Guide’s now annual roundup of the year’s best culture. As ever, the Guardian is already knee-deep in lists – of films (UK and US), albums (across rock and pop, and classical), TV shows, books and games, and theatre, comedy and dance. Some of those have already counted down to No 1, others will reach their respective summits in the coming days, so keep an eye on the homepage.Our list meanwhile is entirely, unapologetically partial, and definitely not as comprehensive as The Guardian’s many top 50s: there are numerous albums we never got around to hearing, and TV shows we’re still only halfway through. (Pluribus, Dope Thief and Blue Lights, I will return to you, I promise!) But hopefully it should give a flavour of a year that, despite so many headwinds, was a pretty strong one for culture
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Avatar: Fire and AshOut now James Cameron comes down with a case of the Christmas blues, so to speak, as the director’s record-breaking franchise epic returns once more to planet Pandora for more internecine strife and respecting of the splendour of the natural world, rendered in dazzling motion-capture glory.Silent Night, Deadly NightOut now Actor Rohan Campbell graduates from Michael Myers wannabe in the fairly dire Halloween Ends, to main bogeyman Billy Chapman in the latest instalment of the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise (second remake, seventh film overall, fact fans). Per franchise lore, he witnessed his parents’ murder-by-Santa aged five, and the rest is grisly history.Fackham HallOut now Jimmy Carr turns his hand to screenwriting with this parody of Downton Abbey-type films. Given the actual Downton Abbey films already play as a parody of Downtown Abbey-type films, there may not be much to add, but a cast including Thomasin McKenzie, Katherine Waterston, Damian Lewis and Anna Maxwell Martin are here to give it their best shot
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Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s speech: ‘Surprise primetime episode of The Worst Wing’
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Dev Hynes’ deeply personal response to his mother’s death embodied the many unexpected shades of grief in pastoral hymnals and post-punk The 50 best albums of 2025 More on the best culture of 2025There’s a lot of grief across the best albums of this year. It’s unsurprising: 2025 has felt like a definitive and dismal break with government accountability, protections for marginalised people and holding back the encroachment of AI in creative and intellectual fields, to cherrypick just a few horrors. Anna von Hausswolff and Rosalía reached for transcendence from these earthly disappointments. Bad Bunny and KeiyaA countered colonial abuse and neglect with writhing resistance anthems. On a more personal scale, Lily Allen and Cate Le Bon grappled with disillusionment about mis-sold romantic ideals
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The arts in England are underfunded, and were dealt a blow by Covid from which many organisations have not yet recovered. But that has been only part of the story. The sheer weight of required form-filling, the endless bureaucracy, the impracticable length of time it takes to simply be funded by Arts Council England (ACE) have caused universal frustration among those working in the arts. There is much talk of exhaustion and burnout.Many organisations have felt frustrated, too, by the strictures of ACE’s flagship strategy, Let’s Create, which, though admirable in principle, with its focus on participation in the arts, is perhaps tilted too far from recognising the expertise and individuality of artists and arts institutions
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