Invicta East Kent athletics club is due to have a new track surface laid down in order to adhere to England Athletics guidelines, as it has not had a new surface in 25 years. This will allow them to continue to hold competitions at the track throughout the summer athletics season. This attracts new, and often, young athletes to come and try the sport for the very first time.
However, financially, for a smaller athletics club such as Invicta, a new track can be a challenge. It costs around £309,000 to get a new surface for the track, or alternatively, £1,500,000 to completely re-locate to a different track. This amount of money is not something which a local and relatively small athletics club like Invicta would have at their disposal. It often means relying on other bodies to invest such as schools, or the national sporting body, England Athletics, to put some money forward to help the grass roots level of the sport.
The track sits on the grounds of The Canterbury Academy School. Ralph Noel, Invicta East Kent Athletics Club Chairman, said that 25 years ago when the track was last re-laid, “the school agreed to put money aside each year so that when it came to having to do work to the track again there would be money saved up”. But this has not happened, and now the club has been left the issue of trying to find where to get the money from.
Ralf also said “I think it is a national issue and I can think of 3 or 4 tracks instantly that are no longer used for competition” and that it is “ the smaller clubs which suffer the most”.
This is not a stand-alone case when it comes to local athletics clubs struggling to find such vast amount of money for refurbishments. Another athletics club in Kent, Thanet AC, is needing repairs done to their track, however due to complications regarding who is liable to pay for the repairs, they are yet to be completed.
In a statement from Thanet AC: “There are discussions ongoing between the school, TDC and KCC concerning liability to pay for the repairs. It’s a complex issue as the school has been through multiple name and ownership changes since the track was built and there are historic legal agreements in place. We will be kept informed of the outcome of these. To give you an idea, we are talking about £70k of repairs for the lights and the surface (the bulk of this is for the lights)”.
With grassroots athletics at this time being a not very well funded sport, and the maintenance of an athletics track being quite so expensive, it is likely that cases like these will continue to rise. Ralf said that England athletics should have a ‘pot’ to deal with cases such as these, however “like all institutions in the UK at the moment, they are no doubt, underfunded”.
There have been alternative solutions to these issues in other areas of the country. Kettering Town Harriers Athletics club has recently accepted an investment from the Northamptonshire FA, who in turn have accepted a grant of £810,330 from the Premier League, the FA and the Government’s football foundation. The main purpose of the grant is to promote women’s football, however, the facility belongs to Kettering Town Harriers, so the investment will help the athletics club as well. This could potentially be a theme in the future, where wealthier sports such as football or rugby, aid other facilities, which also benefit the grass roots levels of other sports.