PitchPower

The Premier League, The FA and Government’s Football Foundation is on a mission to transform the quality of grass football pitches across England, because great facilities enhance physical and mental wellbeing and strengthen communities. We set ourselves the ambitious goal of reaching 7,000 good quality grass pitches in England by 2024 and 20,000 by 2028. But, to do this effectively, we need to assess every one of the country’s 50,000 grass pitches. Last year we launched PitchPower, a web app that puts the power to inspect pitches into the hands of community clubs. The app has sped up our assessment process by more than five times meaning we will achieve in ten years, what would otherwise have taken 50. Thanks to PitchPower we are already well ahead of our 2024 target and we’ve been able to target funding to improve pitches at the communities that need it most. It has revolutionised how we assess pitches and given us a huge head start in our effort to transform football pitches for England’s 12 million grassroots footballers. The app has been so successful that other sports will soon be using it for their own pitch improvement programmes.