New school MUGA installation in Surrey | ETC Sports Surfaces

Children of Royal Kent School delighted with new MUGA installation

Royal Kent Primary School has been educating the children of Oxshott, Surrey, since 1820. Committed to promoting a unique family and community culture, one of the school’s aims is to provide its children with a diverse range of opportunities, including a rich curriculum of sports and play. ETC Sports Surfaces shares this dedication to promoting a love of physical activity amongst children – so we were delighted when the school invited us to upgrade its playground area with a new MUGA surface, fencing and associated works.

The project was led by the school’s Head Teacher, Katie Hancock, who explains that: “We wanted to improve the playground surface and the drainage underneath, as well as installing a new MUGA pitch. Our playground project was aimed at tackling a variety of issues and ETC Sports Surfaces were able to support us through all stages of thinking about and designing the project.”

The solution that we identified for the school was a Matchplay 2 artificial grass pitch, manufactured by Playrite. The surface was installed and finished by our skilled on-site team over the summer holidays to ensure minimum disruption to the school’s busy schedule.

Multi use games areas: The ideal space-saving solution for schools

Schools are amongst our many clients looking to provide more sporting opportunities when space is at a premium. In this situation, today’s multi-use sports surfaces provide an ideal solution for both space and budget constrictions. A MUGA can accommodate up to four sports at a time by combining different markings on the same pitch. The Matchplay 2 surface, with its needle punch carpet and sand infill, offered Royal Kent School a free draining, safe and hard-wearing surface with cost-effective maintenance requirements – so we felt that it ticked all the boxes for this client.

We also installed double wire fencing supplied by Zaun, to protect children in the surrounding playground from ball games and give clear definition to the games area. To compete the project, we finished the installation with hoops and rebound boards for hockey and netball, plus secure locking gates to protect the school’s new MUGA outside of school hours.

Constructing the new MUGA pitch to stringent health and safety standards

Even during the summer holidays, schools are incredibly busy places with staff and visitors coming and going all the time. It was therefore vital that we delivered the entire project to the most exacting health and safety standards – and that’s something that the everyone at ETC Sports Surfaces prides ourselves on. Our membership of CHAS, accreditation with SAPCA, transparent health and safety policy and comprehensive insurance arrangements all reassured the school that this important project was in safe hands from day one. We also take our MUGA workmanship and on-site conduct extremely seriously. So, we’re delighted that the school has had a great experience of our service, with Katie confirming that: “The children were thrilled to come back in September to their new-look playground. We would recommend working with ETC Sports Surfaces to any school and we are very pleased that we chose to work with them.”

The final word, though, must go to the children. Recently, we heard from Royal Kent School’s Year 6 Games Captains, who collectively told us: “We love our new Sports Arena! All pupils, from Reception to Year 6, can use all the features and we all appreciate that it is much softer when you fall over. As well as using our MUGA pitch for different sports, we can also use it for all sorts of different activities at break times. We would give our Sports Arena ten out of ten – and would recommend that any school that is thinking about it should go for it.”