FAQ

Operational Status means the functional status of a facility.  The Operational Status of a facility is defined as:

FacStatusID 1 - Planned - A sport facility which has received planning permission, but construction is yet to commence.  For example, a new school sports hall that has been granted planning permission, but where construction has not started. 

FacStatusID 2 - Under Construction - A new sport facility in the process of being built. For example, a new local authority leisure centre that is currently being built, but not yet opened. 

FacStatusID 3 - Operational - A sport facility that is currently operational and in use.   For example, an AGP at a College site that is currently in use. Facilities that are operational do not necessarily need to be available for public use.  

FacStatusID 4 - Temporarily Closed  - A sport facility that is not in use for a limited period of time. The closure is temporary and the facility will reopen. For example, an AGP that is temporarily closed in order to replace the carpet.  

FacStatusID 5 - Closed - A sport facility that is permanently closed.  For example, a commercial health & fitness facility that has permanently closed and ceased trading.  

FacStatusID 7 - No Grass Pitches Currently Marked Out - An area of grass that has previously been marked out for sports pitches but is no longer. For example, a park which used to have a football pitch marked out, but the pitch is no longer marked out.  

FacStatusID 8 - Not Known - The Facility Status is not known.

UPDATE April 2020:  As of 1st April 2020 the facility operational status of “Does not appear to meet Active Places criteria” (FacStatusID 6) was removed as a status option and a new separate "Meets Active Places Criteria" flag was introduced.    

The separate "Meets Active Places Criteria" flag allows for facilities with specifications outside of expected ranges to be recorded in Active Places.  For example, the facility type of Athletics Tracks is expected to have between 4 and 12 lanes.   When a facility has a specification outside of these expected ranges then the "Meets Active Places Criteria" flag will be set to ‘no’. 

This allows Active Places to record a broader range of facilities, the benefit being to capture operational facilities even if they are of a non-standard specification. It is not a reflection of the quality or it failing to meet a certain design standard.

Note, Active Places Power reports set the default settings of the "Status" criteria to 2 (under construction), 3 (operational) and 4 (temporary closed) as this is consistent with Sport England's own reporting of "operational" facilities.  Further it should be noted, within the interactive maps that the “All Facilities” map layer includes all facilities irrespective of operational status or "Meets Active Places Criteria" flag.

The definitions of the facility types can be found under Help > Sports Data Model (SDM).