York, Bootham Park: Bootham School football pitches plans

As The Press reported, City of York Council's planning committee has approved changing the use of the long derelict former Bootham Park Hospital building into a 172-bed residential care community.

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Councillors were told that a benefit of the scheme is that it would formalise public access to the parkland and allow for the creation of two football pitches, with £2 million spent on landscaping the grounds.

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As part of an agreement with neighbouring Bootham School, the school will look to create two football pitches - one 11 a side and the other for nine a side matches on part of the three hectares of open space.

They would be primarily for the use of the school and pupils will eventually have access from the current school site - which is only separated from the parkland by a fence - to the two new pitches beyond.

Bootham's head, Chris Jeffrey, said although the precise details are still being talked over - including exactly where on the land the pitches will be placed - the school will pay for them to be created and maintained.

"We would need to drain it and cultivate it because, at the moment, it's not fit for playing any quality of sport on," said Mr Jeffrey.

"We would make these fields useable for good class sport and we would maintain them, that's our responsibility."

Chris Jeffrey

Mr Jeffrey said talks have been on-going about the land since the building closed, but right from the outset, the plan has been for other schools to be able to use the pitches, with the possibility of sports clubs using them too at some point.

He said: "We immediately saw this as more than just a resource for us to use. We know it has to be for the benefit of the whole community.

"We have identified local schools that could benefit the most from use of the pitches, some of which we already have established links with through use of our facilities in the past. We haven’t had any formal discussions yet around the use of these pitches – this will commence once final approval is given.

"We certainly will not be charging schools and haven’t yet scoped out work with local sports clubs. This will also commence on final approval."

Mr Jeffrey sees no difficulties with the public access to the site as pupils will be using the pitches for supervised games lessons.

The land around Bootham Park (Image: Haydn Lewis)

He also said there are no plans to light the pitches after dark as they are not going to change the look of the land to that extent.

"It's good that we have got to this point. It's good for the school and I think it could be good for the community as well," he said.

"In the end it will be a much more productive use of the land."

Mr Jeffrey said the school would also provide input if asked on any other landscaping on the remainder of the grounds and the trim trail type activities.

The plan is for the pitch development work to start in Spring next year.