Active Lincolnshire was awarded £989k of Opening School Facilities investment from the Department for Education in 2023, to support Lincolnshire schools to open their facilities for local community and pupils to use, for sport and other physical activities, outside of the normal school day.

The funding will support schools over the next three years; £324,147 has been distributed to seventeen schools in the first year. Active Lincolnshire have worked with schools to achieve sustainable plans which will mean facilities can stay open long term. The intention is to progressively fund the majority of this first wave of facilities into the second and third year allowing them to develop the offer and ensure a tapered transition to being fully financially sustainable. Additional facilities that could benefit from this support will be highlighted and funded in year two and three.

Opening School Facilities Report

In February 2021 The Department for Education announced an investment of £10.1 million to support schools to open their sports facilities all year round, helping more children and young people to be physically active during evenings, weekends and school holidays.

As an Active Partnership, we were awarded £107,000 of this funding to help schools in Lincolnshire open up their facilities. We worked with Craig Mulhall at Mulhall Leisure Consultancy Limited(MLC) and Andy Wilkinson - Assistant Headteacher at Carre's Grammar School. (Seconded to MLC) on this programme to help select and identify suitable projects and award the funding.

The funding was distributed in small grants (a maximum of £10,000 per school) to a number of priority schools based on an agreed set of criteria.

Read our Report to find out more about which schools were awarded the funding, and how it was spent.

Use our School is a free resource from Sport England that supports schools to open their facilities to the community during evenings, weekends and holiday periods.

Schools can use this resource to find information, templates and case studies to open their facilities in an inclusive and sustainable way.

Follow the link to visit the Sport England website to discover more.