Your School Your Club (YSYC) is an initiative to help better utilise the school estate for sport and physical activity.
The school estate is the primary sports facility owner within NI (44%).
The use of existing sports facilities within the school sports estate has a major impact on the provision of sports facilities for community and club use. YSYC develops partnerships to provide new or upgrade community access to school facilities, creating or facilitating additional capacity for the sport and community sector.
The opportunity presented by community use of schools is that by addressing barriers to community access, the largest quantity of sports facilities within NI could be opened to wider community use outside school hours, at weekends, and school holidays.
Sport NI is bidding to the Department for Communities for funding for a five-year Your School Your Club programme, of which 2025/26 is the first year.
We have further developed the programme for 2025/26 and through analysis of the previous seven years of the programme, and our own infrastructure research, Sport NI has identified three key themes for the 2025/26 programme:
Year 1 Criteria:
1. Provision of new floodlighting;
2. Resurfacing of existing pitch/es and courts; and
3. Access arrangements.
Please note that playing facilities must meet minimum National Governing Body technical playing standards. For example, a soccer pitch must have minimum dimensions of 90m x 45m plus run offs. In addition to this, ancillary facilities (eg changing) that can accommodate adult usage must be available.
We are therefore inviting schools to submit Stage 1 Application Forms for projects that meet this Year 1 criteria, as well as submitting the evidence that they meet the usual Mandatory Requirements, which are: Board of Governors Support, Managing Authority Support, Security of Tenure, and Planning Approval.
If your school and project meets the Mandatory Requirements as outlined above, you will be invited to submit a Stage 2 Application Form and asked to provide information on your current community use (if any), the additional hours of community use you are proposing through your project, and the number of people that will use your facility(ies) annually over a five year period following completion of this project.
This will be in the form of an appropriate sports development plan, timetables of existing allocated use, and proposed allocated use (templates will be provided).
The link to the Stage 1 Application Form is HERE.
The closing date is Friday 16 May 2025 at 12pm. If you have any queries at any time, please do not hesitate to email our team at: yourschoolyourclub@sportni.net
