A new sports ground booking policy is being designed to give residents a fair go at using ratepayer-funded facilities in high demand from out of town events.

The present policy is a hierarchical cascade whereby local teams can be bumped from a field or training facility by out of town teams, matches and events.

Venues including Blake Park could be in line for a new booking system.

Tauranga City Council strategic planner Cheryl Steiner says they are seeking direction from councillors as to how the policy can be improved as the demand for city facilities rises.

It is hoped a revised policy would favour local teams and events.

'Our booking officer is currently working through a process with a request from a national sports team wanting to train on Blake Park, which would require displacement of club training.”

She says under current policy the international training would displace the club training.

'We are doing our utmost to find an alternative location for either party. So we are a little bit stuck with a lack of clear direction about what the decision making factor should be if we can't accommodate both.”

If two teams want to use the same field at the same time on the same day, council staff have to make decision on the current priority of use; international or national event, regional event, local event, club event, club game, club training.

A result of the knock-down approach is that it can impact on a local team's ability to carry out a season where an event may displace local sports use.

Recreational relationships manager Kiri Pope says that while council staff try and find solutions with alternative times and or venues, sometimes it is the local team that misses out because of the policy.

Or the city can miss out. A promoter wanted to use Blake Park for a cricket tournament last summer, bringing in teams from round the country. It would have closed four wickets to normal summer club play.

The council offered the use of Blake Park Sunday and Monday, and the event did not happen.

Councillors directed the staff to identify new criteria to determine the council's priorities for use of outdoor spaces, recognising the different types and functions of outdoor spaces primarily for high demand areas.

Murray Guy wants a policy which will not put ratepayers and regular users out on the street as part of an automatic process. The ratepayers and regular users should have the priority, says Murray.

Mayor Stuart Crosby says no matter what the policy is, it will not suit everybody, and he guaranteed a situation will come along where a new policy will have to be broken.

Larry Baldock says the policy criteria will also need to include spectators.

'If a local code has to give up a training night or a game, but in exchange for the city seeing something international, that has to be part of the mix,” says Larry.

'The current approach is not really working for us at the moment,” says Cheryl. 'It doesn't really address some of the issues.”

New criteria will better guide staff over who has priority over different types of outdoor spaces and functions. Some would be allocated higher priority for community groups while others are more suited to national events.

Council staff are also working on the development of event resource kits for high use events spaces. The kits will provide operational information on these spaces such as availability of infrastructure, size and scale of the space, and limitations and opportunities for use of the space.

The new draft policy is timetabled to be adopted next month, with public consultations and hearings taking place in July and August before the final policy being adopted in September.