Floods can have a devastating impact on sports clubs, causing significant damage to both changing and social facilities as well as to sports pitches.
The floods in 2007 and 2008 – and more recently in 2012 and the winter 2013/14 – caused significant damage to buildings and machinery on many sports club facilities as well as depositing harmful sediment and waste on pitches.
Floods as large as these are relatively rare. However, many clubs are affected by more regular flooding, such as on the far corner of a playing field or in the grounds shed.
There is much that can be done to help reduce the risk of flood damage and mitigate its impact when it occurs.
Sport England, working with a number of national governing bodies for sport (The FA, RFU, RFL, ECB, LTA and EHB), has produced a set of information sheets and a downloadable template for clubs and facility managers to help them find out whether their facilities are at risk of flooding and if so how to develop a flood plan and other strategies that will help reduce the impact of flooding. The guidance documents include:
- How to plan ahead – what to do to minimise the impact of future flooding of sports facilities
- Developing a club flood plan – making sure everyone knows what to do in a flood
- A flood plan template
- Flood resilient design – how to make sports facilities more resilient to flooding
- What to do to minimise the impact of flooding following a flood alert/flood warning
- After the flood (buildings) – how to recover from a flood safely and quickly
- After the flood (pitches and courts) – how to recover from a flood safely and quickly
You can download all of this information below.
The ECB has also produced flood relief case studies, which can be viewed on the ECB website.