Simon Langton Girls’ 3G pitch: What the proposal means for Canterbury Eagles
The planning application for a new 3G pitch at Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School is now live on the Canterbury City Council planning website, and members of the public have the opportunity to view the plans and submit comments.
As the school's principal community football partner, Canterbury Eagles strongly supports the proposal.
First and foremost, it is important to be clear that this would be Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School's facility, not Canterbury Eagles'. We are working closely with the school as its partner football club and hope to become a significant community user of the pitch. But decisions about the operation and use of the facility would ultimately remain with the school.
However, we thought it would be useful to explain how Canterbury Eagles would envisage using the pitch, why the facility is so important to a club of our size, and the particular opportunity we believe it creates for the continued growth of girls' football in Canterbury.
A community pitch – not a senior football ground
The proposed pitch measures approximately 91m x 55m.
That's an excellent size for training and youth football, but importantly it is smaller than the full-size pitches required for senior competitive football.
For Canterbury Eagles, none of our teams above U16 level would use Langton for competitive matches. Our men's and women's senior teams would continue to play their home fixtures elsewhere.
In addition, the competitions in which Canterbury Eagles teams play do not permit evening matches, so any Eagles activity taking place under the floodlights in the evenings would be training sessions, not competitive fixtures.
Adult Eagles teams may train at Langton, just as they already train at school and community facilities across Canterbury. But the idea of Langton becoming a venue for senior men's competitive football simply doesn't reflect either the dimensions of the pitch or how Canterbury Eagles would use it.
Nor is this designed as a spectator venue. There is no grandstand or clubhouse, and spectator provision is extremely limited, with a modest viewing area along part of one side of the pitch. We would expect youth matches to attract no more spectators than currently attend our matches at Langton – typically around 20–30 people. Training sessions, which would account for all of Eagles' evening use of the facility, attract far fewer spectators still.
This is fundamentally a participation facility, rather than a spectator facility.
A genuine opportunity for girls' football
We're particularly excited about what Langton could mean for girls' and women's football in Canterbury.
Canterbury Eagles has spent many years building one of the strongest female football pathways in Kent. We have girls playing throughout our age groups, a senior women's team, a successful Wildcats programme introducing younger girls to the game, and a clear pathway through which girls can continue playing as they grow up.
Demand continues to grow.
Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School also has a strong commitment to girls' sport, which is one of the reasons the partnership between the school and Canterbury Eagles makes so much sense.
Within the time allocated to Canterbury Eagles, our intention would be to give female football priority when allocating prime training slots. Boys' and men's teams would use the facility too – this is a community football pitch – but we are absolutely committed to ensuring it creates more and better opportunities for girls to play.
Of course, the facility belongs to the school, and all decisions about its overall programme and allocation would ultimately be theirs.
Our ambition, however, is clear: we would like Langton to become a genuine hub for the development of female football in Canterbury.
That doesn't mean excluding boys. It means making the most of a rare opportunity – a high-quality football facility located at a girls' school and supported by a club with a thriving female section – to create significantly more opportunities for girls to play.
Why do we need an artificial pitch?
Canterbury Eagles now has 43 teams, more than 600 youth and adult players, and operates across 13 different venues around Canterbury.
We don't have a home ground or a central training facility, and one of our biggest challenges is simply finding enough places for our teams to train.
During the winter, floodlit pitches are essential. With darkness falling before most children have even finished school, virtually all midweek training has to take place under floodlights. Unfortunately, Canterbury is woefully short of good-quality floodlit football facilities, leaving clubs competing for a very limited number of available slots.
The problem is compounded by our reliance on grass pitches. Prolonged periods of wet weather can leave them waterlogged and unusable, leading to cancelled training sessions and postponed weekend fixtures. Even when they remain playable, the amount of use they can sustain through a wet winter is necessarily limited.
A floodlit 3G pitch addresses both problems. It provides somewhere to train after dark and a surface that can accommodate far more football, far more reliably, throughout the winter without becoming damaged through overuse.
For a volunteer-run club trying to organise regular football for hundreds of local children every week, that combination of capacity and reliability is enormously valuable.
Managing how the site is used
Running a club with 43 teams already requires careful coordination of where and when football takes place.
If Langton goes ahead, it would be no different.
We would work with the school to schedule Eagles training and matches sensibly, taking into account other activity elsewhere on the site. We would not simply schedule every available team onto the site at the same time.
There are practical reasons for this as well as considerations for neighbours.
We need to make sure there aren't too many players, parents and coaches arriving at any one location simultaneously. We also need to manage the use of the school's grass pitches carefully so that they aren't overplayed – particularly during the winter months when they are most vulnerable to damage.
This is something Canterbury Eagles already does across the many facilities we use around the city. Coordinating hundreds of fixtures and training sessions is a normal part of running a club of our size.
A new 3G pitch would give us another extremely valuable option within that network. It wouldn't mean transferring the whole club to Langton.
A school and community facility
It is also important to remember that this would remain a school site.
The normal expectations around behaviour and use of school premises would continue to apply. It isn't being transformed into a commercial football stadium or entertainment venue.
Canterbury Eagles takes those responsibilities extremely seriously.
We are an FA 3-Star Accredited Club, the highest level of FA accreditation, and a registered charity. Respect, sportsmanship and responsible behaviour from players, coaches and parents are central to the way we operate.
We're proud that this ethos runs right through the club. Even our adult Sunday men's team recently finished top of its league's fair play standings, receiving recognition for its sportsmanship.
The school has chosen to work with Canterbury Eagles because our organisations share similar values and because both of us want young people to have positive experiences through sport.
And, ultimately, the school would retain control over who uses its facility and how it is operated.
Not a commercial football ground
The proposed facility is being supported through the Football Foundation.
Facilities funded in this way are intended to support grassroots and community football, not to generate private commercial profit.
A well-used 3G pitch can of course generate income through bookings. That's important because these facilities cost money to operate, maintain and eventually renew. But within the not-for-profit model, that income supports the operation and long-term sustainability of the facility and the development of sport.
The objective is more people playing football and a facility capable of sustaining itself for the long term.
More people playing is the point
If Langton succeeds, more people will use this site for sport than do today.
We don't think that should be disguised. It's one of the reasons we support the proposal.
Creating a high-quality all-weather pitch is specifically intended to enable more children and adults to be physically active throughout the year.
For Canterbury Eagles, that means boys and girls, men and women, recreational players, walking footballers and people who might be taking their first steps into the game.
But increased participation should not be confused with large crowds or a stadium environment.
The overwhelming majority of people using Langton through Canterbury Eagles would be participants arriving for an organised training session or youth fixture, playing football, and going home again.
And because activities would be carefully scheduled, those participants wouldn't all be there at once.
That's what community football looks like.
Being good neighbours
We completely understand that any significant development raises questions for people who live nearby.
Issues such as lighting, noise, traffic and operating hours are legitimate matters for the planning process, and the detailed application needs to demonstrate how these can be managed appropriately.
As a prospective long-term user of the facility, Canterbury Eagles has an interest in getting that right too.
We want a facility that works for the school, for our members and for the community around it.
We would also expect our players, parents and coaches to understand that using Langton comes with a responsibility to respect the people who live nearby.
Being a good neighbour isn't an optional extra. It would be part of using the facility.
A huge opportunity for Canterbury
Canterbury Eagles engages more than 1,000 local people each year and is powered by 161 volunteers contributing more than 34,000 hours annually.
Our work has been independently assessed as generating approximately £1.9 million of social value each year, through physical activity, wellbeing, volunteering and community participation.
Yet access to suitable facilities remains one of the biggest constraints on what we can offer.
Langton won't solve every facilities challenge facing Canterbury Eagles. At 91m x 55m it cannot become the permanent home for our entire club, and we will continue to explore opportunities for a larger base elsewhere in Canterbury.
But it could solve something extremely important.
It could provide reliable, high-quality, year-round football for hundreds of local people; dramatically improve winter training provision; give the school an outstanding sporting asset; and create a particularly exciting opportunity for the continued growth of girls' football.
For a city with a thriving grassroots football community but a shortage of high-quality all-weather facilities, we believe that's an opportunity worth supporting.
