Community Facility Maintenance Planning Checklist

Walk the whole facility and list each element in turn, such as the surface, markings, fencing, gates, seating, lighting columns, bins and planting.

Listing by element rather than by task is what stops the small items being forgotten until they fail.

Ask the contractor and each supplier what looking after their part of the work involves, and write the answers against the element they relate to.

What any element needs, and how often, is set by the contractor, the supplier and the relevant governing body rather than by a general expectation.

Mark the tasks that sit between elements, such as clearing a channel beside a fence line or sweeping where a path meets a surface.

Work at the boundary between two elements is the work nobody has claimed, so it stays undone until something backs up.

Record that how often each task is needed is a question for the people who supplied the work, not something to be settled by the committee.

The interval between any check or treatment is established by the supplier, the contractor or the relevant governing body and confirmed for this site.

Ask the contractor what tends to go wrong first on facilities like this one, and write down the answer in their words.

Contractors know the usual failure pattern, and asking directly gives you a far better plan than guessing.

If part of the site already exists, note what has already worn, cracked, faded or clogged, and photograph it before anything is tidied.

Existing wear is site-specific evidence that no general guidance can give you, and it disappears once repairs start.

Put a name against each task on your list, and where you cannot, mark it clearly as unallocated rather than leaving it blank.

The unallocated tasks are the real output of this exercise, and hiding them behind a blank space helps nobody.

Decide for each task whether it is done by volunteers or arranged with somebody, and be honest about which of those is realistic here.

Groups routinely allocate to volunteers work that needs equipment, timing or skill that the volunteers do not have.

Record who covers each task when the named person is away, ill or has stepped down, and whether that person knows.

Cover is where volunteer arrangements break, and it is usually assumed rather than agreed with the person concerned.

Write down what each user group is expected to do at the start and at the end of a session, and whether that expectation reaches new members.

Groups will do small tasks willingly if they are asked in writing and never if it depends on somebody remembering to mention it.

Note which tasks need somebody trained or suitably qualified, and treat those as arranged work rather than as a rota entry.

Which tasks require a suitably qualified or trained person is established by the supplier, the relevant governing body and what applies locally.

Decide who notices when something on the list has not been done, since a plan without anybody watching it stops quietly rather than loudly.

Upkeep plans rarely collapse; they fade, and the fading is only visible to somebody whose job it is to look.

Ask the contractor and each supplier for their aftercare instructions in writing before the work finishes, rather than after a problem appears.

Aftercare requirements are set by the contractor and supplier; confirm what they expect before agreeing to any arrangement for looking after the work.

Ask what the contractor and supplier say would affect the aftercare arrangement attached to their work, and note the answer where the upkeep list can be seen.

What affects any arrangement attached to finished work is a matter for the contractor and supplier, and is confirmed with them in writing rather than assumed.

Record anything you are told never to use on a surface, a coating or a fence, and keep that note with the cleaning materials themselves.

Cleaning methods and treatments for a sports surface are specified by the surface supplier and specialist contractor and confirmed before anything is applied.

Ask whether anything is restricted while the work is new, such as when it may first be used or what may cross it, and write those instructions down.

Restrictions on new work are set by the contractor and supplier for this specific installation; confirm them rather than assuming they are general.

Note who to contact about each part of the work, and keep that list somewhere the whole committee can reach rather than in one inbox.

Contact information is the first thing lost at handover and the first thing needed when something fails.

Record that adding anything to the facility later, such as a fixing, a sign or a plant, is a question for the contractor before it is done.

Alterations, fixings and additions to finished work are discussed with the original contractor and qualified professionals before anything is attached.

Ask the relevant governing body and the local authority what checking arrangements apply to a facility of this kind, and record what they tell you.

Checking regimes and any records they require are established by the relevant governing body and the local authority; nothing here sets any of them.

Record that the condition of equipment such as posts, nets, goals and fittings is judged by suitably qualified people rather than by a volunteer walk round.

Whether any item of equipment remains fit to be used is established by suitably qualified people and the relevant governing body, never by observation alone.

Agree what volunteers can usefully note, such as something loose, missing, damaged or blocked, and how they pass that on.

Observation and judgement are different things, and separating them lets volunteers help without being asked to decide anything.

Treat anything electrical, including lighting columns and their controls, as arranged work for suitably qualified people at all times.

Electrical elements are checked and maintained only by suitably qualified people, in line with what applies locally at this site.

Note any tree, wall, structure or bank around the facility and ask who should be looking at those, since they are rarely on anybody's list.

Trees, walls and structures are assessed by suitably qualified professionals; confirm with the local authority who is responsible for those on and beside the site.

Ask what records a professional would want to see when they attend, and start keeping those from the point the facility comes into use.

Records asked for later cannot honestly be created after the event, and starting them at handover takes very little effort.

Note which trees overhang or sit upwind of the facility, and what they drop onto the surface, into channels and against fences.

Leaf fall is a common cause of blocked drainage at community facilities, and it is largely predictable from where the trees already stand.

Record where growth encroaches from, such as a hedge, a bank, a verge or a neighbouring garden, and who owns each of those.

Encroachment from land you do not control is a conversation with a neighbour rather than a task on your own list.

Write down where water stands, silt collects or moss appears after heavy rain, and photograph it while it is visible.

What standing water or silt indicates about a surface or its drainage is established by the specialist contractor and qualified professionals.

Note what happens here in cold weather, including anything that would need protecting or draining, and ask the supplier what they advise.

Preparing equipment or a surface for cold weather follows supplier instructions for this installation; confirm them rather than following general practice.

Decide who checks the site after a storm and what they do about anything blown loose, and record how they report it.

The period after severe weather is when a facility is most likely to be used with something damaged nobody has looked at.

Identify the times when the facility is least used, and note which work would be easiest to arrange then.

Fitting the noisier or more disruptive work into the quiet periods is one of the few genuinely free improvements available.

List the tools and machinery the upkeep tasks need, such as a mower, a brush, a blower, marking equipment and hand tools.

Deciding who does the work is meaningless until somebody has asked what the work needs in order to be done.

Record which equipment is owned, which is borrowed, and from whom, since borrowed machinery arrives with conditions and disappears without notice.

Arrangements resting on one person's own mower tend to be among the more fragile parts of a volunteer upkeep plan.

Note where upkeep equipment would be kept and whether that place is reachable by the people expected to use it.

Machinery kept behind a locked door with a single key holder is machinery that only that person will ever use.

Note whether any machinery uses fuel or batteries, and ask what that means for how and where it may be kept on a shared site.

Storage of fuel, batteries and chargers follows supplier instructions and what applies locally, confirmed with suitably qualified people.

List the consumable items upkeep needs, such as marking material, replacement fixings, spare netting and cleaning products, and note who reorders them.

Running out of a consumable stops a task as effectively as having nobody to do it, and it happens far more often.

Ask the specialist contractor what machinery may be taken onto the surface at all, and record anything they tell you to keep off it.

What may cross or work on a sports surface is determined by the surface supplier and specialist contractor; some damage may not be reversible afterwards.

Decide where the upkeep information lives, and make sure more than one person can reach it without asking anybody's permission.

Facility records held in one person's own account are typically lost as soon as that person stops being involved.

Keep a simple note of what was done, when and by whom, including work arranged with somebody outside the group.

A plain record answers most later questions and is the thing professionals ask for when something goes wrong.

Gather everything handed over at completion, including drawings, instructions, materials information and contact details, and keep it together.

Handover material tends to scatter quickly unless somebody deliberately assembles it into one place while it is still to hand.

Photograph the facility while it is new, from the same positions each time, so that change can be seen rather than argued about.

Gradual wear is invisible to people who see it weekly, and a set of consistent photographs makes it obvious.

Write down the reasoning behind upkeep decisions, not only the decisions, so a later committee does not undo something for good reasons it never knew.

Undoing an arrangement whose purpose has been forgotten is one of the commonest ways community facilities deteriorate.

Agree how the whole arrangement would be handed to a new committee or a new member of staff, including who currently holds what.

Handover is a task that only exists if somebody schedules it, and it is the one that protects everything else on this list.

Decide how an ordinary user reports a problem, and make that route visible to people who are not on the committee.

Users notice faults first and report them only if the route is obvious and does not depend on knowing somebody.

Record who receives reports and who covers that when they are away, since a report nobody reads is worse than none at all.

An unread reporting route creates a false sense that everything is fine, which is the opposite of what it was for.

Agree who has the authority to stop something being used and who they would consult before doing so.

Whether a facility or item should be taken out of use is a judgement for suitably qualified people and the relevant governing body; the group decides only who calls them.

Decide how every user group would be told that something is out of use, including groups that only attend occasionally.

The group that attends only occasionally is the one that arrives to find a closed facility nobody had told them about.

Note that any temporary measure taken while waiting for help is a question for a professional rather than an arrangement to leave in place.

Temporary measures at a shared facility are agreed with qualified professionals; nothing improvised should be treated as a lasting arrangement.

Keep the reports you receive and look at them together from time to time, since the same fault recurring points at something other than bad luck.

Repeated faults usually indicate a design or use question worth raising with the contractor rather than another repair.