A £1 million artificial football pitch project for Wellington has been put forward for planning approval.

Court Fields School hopes work will be able to start in the autumn, with the floodlit 3G facility ready for use during 2024.

Wellington Town Council has been supporting the plans by The Castle Partnership Trust which runs Court Fields and has pledged £150,000 towards the cost.

The 71,600 sq ft pitch would take more than a third of the school’s sports field next to its existing tennis courts beside Wellington Recreation Ground and be available for use from 9 am to 10 pm every day of the year.

It would be enclosed in a 15 feet high steel mesh fence and lit by a set of six 50 feet tall galvanised steel floodlights.

Tom Betts, project designer for artificial sports pitches firm S&C Slatter, said the scale and appearance of ‘vital paraphernalia’ such as the floodlights and fencing, were ‘as modest and as visually unobtrusive as possible’.

Mr Betts said: “The facility would provide high-quality structured football and rugby match play and training and would offer the certainty that scheduled activities would not be disrupted during inclement and winter weather conditions.”

He said major innovations and improvements in recent years in 3G football pitch development meant today’s surfaces were a high quality and indispensable part of modern facilities whose impact could not be underestimated, helping to increase levels of use by up to twentyfold compared to natural turf.

Mr Betts said: “The high quality, consistent playing surface is the ideal environment to play the game and for young people to learn, and with regular maintenance programmes 3G pitches can be heavily used all year round with no decline in quality.

“They almost completely negate annoying fixture cancellations during winter months, helping football to be a key part of a regular physical activity habit.”

He said the use of 3G pitches was rapidly changing and allowed for match play across all formats of football, five, seven, and nine-a-side, and 11 v 11, enabling significant levels of match- play to be transferred from grass.

Castle Partnership’s planning agent, Coral Curtis, of Grass Roots Planning Ltd, said many of the school’s existing facilities were used by the local community, including for walking netball, cricket, football, archery, and martial arts.

The new 3G pitch would ‘synergise and enhance’ the provision available by delivering a new pitch which could benefit the community and be used all year round.

Ms Curtis said: “There is no comparable facility available within Wellington which would meet the demand for increased user groups.

“If approved, both the school and Wellington Football Club will further focus their community efforts and aim to increase participation in women and girls’ football, disability football, small-sided teams and leagues, over-50s, and youth clubs.

“Community use over the course of the year would account for 66 per cent of the time.”

Ms Curtis said the school already had good sporting facilities but it struggled during wet weather when pitches became waterlogged.

She said although hockey matches could not be played on it, the 3G facility would improve both hockey and rugby training.

There was an existing cricket wicket which would be lost, but it had not been used ‘for a significant number of years’ and the school was looking at increased use of its sports hall for community cricket training and indoor nets.

The Castle Partnership said while the planning application was being considered, it was working on an application seeking a major portion of the project cost from the Football Foundation, which was the charity for the Premier League, the Football Association, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.