The coastal environment of Portland is ideal for many sports and leisure activities despite the complex and sometimes competing aspirations for land or maritime areas.
Portland plays host to much recreational activity, yet it’s communities are recorded as having amongst the lowest levels of participation within the Borough. Are the reasons for this based in our choices or in the amount of access we have to fixed facilities? Do we understand the opportunities right on our doorstep? Do we understand how to share in access to the Olympic legacy?
The current and future economic climate is certain to affect the local fixed facilities. With the Borough Council unlikely to invest in new buildings and citing its preference to move away from maintaining some existing offerings; will community organisations or the open market deliver our preferences?
What of the open spaces well suited to walking or possibly even cycling if it is provided for? A wider agenda exists in relation to this, namely that the leisure and recreation potential of Portland serves to attract visitors to the island. Could this form of tourism be a keynote of wider regeneration? Is the recreation potential inherent in our environment more important to us than we first think?