All school sports pitches to be open on weekends in the near future

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The leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council has confirmed that every school sports pitch will be open on the weekends “very soon”.

It’s an issue sports clubs across Caerphilly have battled with the council over for years, as modern four-court pitches have been locked away when they should be at their busiest.

Caerphilly Observer understands the problem for the council has been in getting the schools to agree to open the facilities on weekends, as they have concerns over antisocial behaviour and vandalism.

In a recent meeting with Caerphilly Observer, leader of the council, Sean Morgan, said all school pitches will be open on weekends “very soon.”

He continued: “We’re just working on the finer details with the governors at the schools, but they will all be open.”

It’s understood that the state-of-the-art facilities at Islywn High School could be the first to open on weekends, freeing up availability for other pitches across the borough.

It’s all part of the council’s Sport and Active Recreation strategy, which is a ten-year plan to improve the delivery of sports across Caerphilly.

Cabinet member for waste and leisure, Chris Morgan, spoke about the project recently. He said: “Since the implementation of the strategy in 2019, there has been almost £3 million of investment in Caerphilly Council’s sport and leisure facilities including five new dual-use 3G football and rugby pitches.

“As the only council in the UK to have such a policy, we are the envy of other local authorities.”

Schools themselves are also a focus as part of the strategy, as currently there is a “lack of readily available resources for the new curriculum around wellbeing”.

To tackle this, Sport Caerphilly, which is run by the council, hopes to ‘upskill’ teaching staff in “physical literacy”.