Facilities Planning

These facilities planning models (FPM’s) were developed in 1991 by MTW with assistance from the University of Pennsylvania and the Sports Council (now Sport England).

Sportplan and VISTA were designed to predict volume demand at any given location taking into account the catchment area population and the distance, size and quality of competing public leisure facilities.

This was in response to the haphazard and imprecise way that leisure facility demand was being forecast often with disastrous and costly results. A recent example of this is the Millennium Dome where no firm basis was used for predicting visitor numbers of 12 million yet the economics of the project were very dependant on reaching the target set. The main facts about the FPM’s are as follows.

• Sportplan and Vista are still the only site specific FPM’s available in the UK and quite probably among the only systems worldwide.
• They have been used by over 50 Local Authorities to help plan or redevelop their leisure and tourism centres.
• They have been tested many times on existing centres and their results are generally within 3-5% of actual visit volumes. (In the case of one local authority in London, they were within 1% of their actual visits at 3 wet and dry centres).

Applications of Sportplan and VISTA

MTW has used Sportplan and VISTA to assist over 40 local authorities with their planning of leisure and recreation typically for the following types of application:

Feasibility of New Sports and Arts Facilities
Sportplan has been used to help local authorities to plan and evaluate their need for sports and leisure centres and visitor attactions and the capacity/scale of facility required.

National Lottery Applications
Sportplan has been used successfully to support local authority and other bids for National Lottery funding.

Local Plans
Sportplan has been used to substantiate Local Plans under the PPG 17 guidelines and has been accepted at planning enquiries as a sound methodology.

Evaluating performance of existing centres
Sportplan has been used to compare actual with theoretical demand at existing leisure centres both by local authorities assessing their performance and by private sector management companies preparing bids for the management of leisure centres.

Impact of new centre on existing facility
Sportplan and VISTA methodology can predict the impact of a new centre on the demand for existing centres in the vicinity.

The main types of leisure facility for which demand levels can be predicted are:

SPORTPLAN

• Sports halls
• Swimming Pools
• Fitness Gyms
• Ice Rinks
• Indoor bowl centres
• Squash courts

VISTA

• Museums
• Art Galleries
• Visitor Attractions
• Cinemas & Theatres