After more than four years, Geelong council has updated its policy governing community sport facilities.
City of Greater Geelong’s new Fair Play policy, an update of the original 2017 document, sets the fees and charges for hiring the City’s more than 400 sporting facilities and outlines what infrastructure the City is responsible for maintaining.
Council will also encourage community groups to share playing fields and other facilities through proportional seasonal fees.
The policy was set to be updated in 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the City to freeze its scheduled review.
Councillor Anthony Aitken said he was pleased to see the adoption of what was the “most significant policy for our sporting clubs in Geelong”, in particular the City’s support of sports lighting.
“The new Fair Play policy…for the first time ever, recognises that lighting is a standard (item),” he said.
“(Lighting) is a very good return on investment to expand the capacity of usage of our sporting facilities and our outdoor facilities. And who’s driving the major demand? It’s female participation in sport.
“We’ve had an absolute explosion…with females participating in organised community sport, and one of the ways we’re trying to respond to that is by saying we need to light our facilities to give more access to females to participate in community sport.”
Councillor Ron Nelson, who pushed for the City to provide funding for picket fences at cricket ovals, said council had listened to the community.
“There have been over 2500 visits on the Have Your Say page…we have really gone out to the community and listened to their feedback,” he said.
However, Councillor Aitken sounded the alarm on the challenges the City faced with funding new projects.
“The golden era is over in terms of the provision of sporting infrastructure, not just in Geelong but around the whole of Victoria,” he said.
“The demise of the state government’s capacity to be able to co-fund these improvements, the council’s own challenges that we have with being the fastest growing city in Australia and the demand for additional new sporting community infrastructure is something that we don’t financially have the capacity to be able to respond to.”
