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Manchester MP welcomes Old Bedians Rugby Club £50,000 from sporting legacy fund

Manchester MP welcomes Old Bedians Rugby Club £50,000 from sporting legacy fund

paul makinen10 Jun 2013 - 09:05
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Lib Dem Sport Spokesperson John Leech MP has welcomed the £50k Sport England bid secured by Old Bedians Rugby Club in Didsbury, south Manchester

People of all ages in south Manchester can look forward to decades of high-quality sport after Old Bedians Rugby Club secured £50,000 of National Lottery investment from Sport England’s Protecting Playing Fields fund.

It comes as even more local sports fields across the country are to be safeguarded and improved after Sport England announced a 50% boost to the Olympic and Paralympic legacy fund.
The £5 million increase, made possible by strong sales of National Lottery tickets, is in response to huge demand for the programme from sports clubs and other local groups.

Club Chairman, Steve Cook, said: “We are delighted to have secured this investment, which means we can upgrade the quality of our playing fields to match the quality of our rugby. We are an ever expanding club and are continuing to improve our facilities. All players of all abilities are welcome at our club.”

John Leech said, “I was more than happy to support Old Bedians with their Sport England funding bid and I’m delighted they have been successful. They are a real community club and I know this money will benefit them and the wider community massively.”

Sport England Chair, Nick Bitel, said: “The popularity of this legacy fund shows just how important good local playing fields are to grassroots sport. I’m delighted that even more communities will now benefit thanks to this extra lottery funding. But Sport England’s support for playing fields is about much more than money; every day our experts play a vital role in protecting sports provision through the planning system.”

Old Bedians will use the investment to improve the drainage and quality of their rugby pitches allowing them to be used year round by a number of sports teams.
Following a record number of bids, 76 projects across England have been successful in the fourth funding round and will share a total of £3.5 million. Over the four rounds, 727 pitches and nearly 2,600 acres across England have been protected and improved.

The next round of funding will open on the 10 June. Sport England will invest between £20,000 and £50,000 of lottery funding in projects that will create, improve and protect playing fields by:

  • Bringing disused playing fields back into use
  • Improving the condition of pitches (e.g. levelling, drainage, reseeding)
  • Buying new playing field land (not less than 0.2 hectares)
  • Buying existing playing field land where there is a known threat, such as the expiry of a lease or a development proposal

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Old Bedians RUFC, Millgate Lane, Didsbury, Manchester, M20 5QX
www.oldbedians.co.uk
twitter.com/oldbedians
facebook.com/oldbedians

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