Fulford School's £1.1m 3G pitch opens late this month and is bookable by local clubs. Burnholme has a £700k Football Foundation grant for a full size pitch.

York is getting two new full size artificial pitches, and both are mostly paid for by somebody else. The first opens at Fulford School in the next fortnight. The second, at Burnholme, cleared its last council hurdle on 9 September when the Executive agreed to accept a £700,000 Football Foundation grant and put in £150,000 of its own.

Both will be bookable outside school and club hours. Between them they answer a gap the council’s own Playing Pitch Strategy has identified in this part of the city.

Fulford: open late September, community access already agreed

The pitch at Fulford School is in its build and delivery phase and will be open in late September 2026, according to the council’s capital programme monitor (Capital Programme Monitor 1 2026/27, City of York Council Executive, 9 September 2026, para 53).

The money came together like this, from the published officer decision that released the council’s share (Officer decision: approval of grant funds to Fulford school 3G development, 16 March 2026):

  • total cost about £1.1m
  • about £700,000 from the Football Foundation
  • £249,000 from City of York Council
  • £150,000 from the school

The council’s contribution is not general council money. It is Section 106 developer money from Germany Beck, set aside for sports improvements in the area under a long-standing agreement to match fund the school. The council raised its share to £249,000 because the cost had grown since the original 2023 quotes.

The officer decision also records why the council did not simply walk away: Football Foundation rules mean the Foundation will not fund more than 65% of a development, so without a local contribution the grant falls over and the facility is lost.

A community usage agreement is already in place with the school. It covers the new pitch as well as the existing sports hall and the tennis and multi-use games area on the same site, so booking arrangements do not have to be invented from scratch.

Burnholme: £700,000 accepted, council in for a tenth

Burnholme Sports Centre is council-owned and run by GLL under the Better brand. What is there now is a multi-use games area with three football pitches, which the council describes as “relatively small, old and in need of improvement” (para 55).

GLL applied to the Football Foundation in summer 2025 for a full size 3G pitch, with the council’s support. The bid was accepted in March 2026. The funding package in the report is:

  • £700,000 from the Football Foundation
  • £250,000 from GLL
  • £150,000 from the council, from sport Section 106 money or the leisure sinking fund
  • against an identified overall cost of £1.05m

Those figures do not quite add up, and it is worth saying so: £700,000 plus £250,000 plus £150,000 is £1.1m, while the report gives the cost as £1.05m and separately calls the funding gap £150,000 (paras 55 and 56). One of the two numbers is out by £50,000.

The council has to be the contracting partner because it owns the land, and it has to sign four Football Foundation agreements, because Foundation-funded work goes through the Foundation’s own framework as a turnkey project (para 58).

The risk the council accepted

The Executive’s printed decision does not just note the grant. It also accepted the risk that scheme cost overruns will need to be funded by the council (City of York Council, printed decisions, Executive, 9 September 2026).

Two specific liabilities sit behind that line in the report:

  • if the project fails at any stage before construction starts, the council as applicant is liable for fees up to a £35,000 cap, which the report says can be met from the funding approval (para 59)
  • if the funding bodies failed and no grant money arrived, the council would be responsible for the whole £1.05m build cost. The report rates this low risk, because the Football Foundation is a national body funded in part by central government (para 60)

Officers call the deal “an excellent opportunity to secure funding and deliver new facilities for residents with a £1 in £10 contribution” (para 57).

What it means for you

  • If you play or coach in York, Fulford’s pitch should be bookable within weeks, under a community usage agreement that already exists. Burnholme’s is a funded scheme, not an open one; no construction date has been published.
  • If you live near Germany Beck, this is your Section 106 money. About £249,000 of it has gone to Fulford, and £1.2m of the recreational payment is still unspent, currently subject to public consultation and to agreements with landowners. The council expects to spend it during 2027 and 2028, and the money expires in March 2031 (para 54).
  • If you use Burnholme now, nothing changes yet. The existing multi-use area stays as it is until the new pitch is built.
  • If you want to follow the money, both schemes sit in the capital programme and will be reported again at the next monitor. Section 106 obligations are attached to planning permissions, and we track York’s live applications on our York planning news page.

Both pitches are additions to what the city already has. Our things to do in York page covers the rest, with prices checked.

Sources