ABOUT:
Who We Are

HADSCAL — the Hay and District Sports & Community Association Ltd — is a limited company with charitable status, and we report to both Companies House and the Charity Commission. 

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Our objectives have stayed the same since the company was formed: 

• Provide and maintain leisure, sports and community facilities 

• Promote the formation of clubs and associations which use those facilities 

• Encourage and assist the development of sporting and community activities in Hay and the surrounding district 

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Although we're a limited company, any money we make goes straight back into delivering those objectives for the benefit of the community. None of our directors are paid — we're all volunteers with day jobs of our own, and every one of us lives in Hay or the surrounding area. (You can read more about who's involved on our trustees' page.) 

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HADSCAL History 

We were first incorporated in 1993 as Hay and District Sports Association Ltd, or HADSAL, and the following year we bought the site on Forest Road — the same site where we're now planning to build this development. It took several years of work to develop the football pitches, floodlights and fencing, both the main pitch where Hay St Mary's play and the additional training pitch. 

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Some of that land was sold off in the years that followed: in 2001 to enable the medical centre on Forest Road, and in 2003 for the housing built alongside it. In 2002 we added “Community” to our name, to better reflect the company's charitable objectives, and became HADSCAL. 

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By 2007, after years of work on designing a community facility, we submitted a planning application for a school, community hall and youth centre on the site, and in 2009 that application was approved. ​

 

Negotiations opened with Powys about moving the new school onto our site, but by 2012 those talks had come to an end, for a number of reasons. The idea of a community facility never entirely went away, but the planning permission was time-limited, a lot of money had already gone on planning, design and legal fees, and we needed to rethink our approach.

 

The permission lapsed in 2014, and we decided to focus instead on supporting local groups — the community hall stayed on the back burner rather than disappearing altogether. Over the years that followed we gave grants to a number of groups, and our board of trustees changed, losing some people and gaining new. 

 

By 2022, our trustees were talking to sports clubs, the council and local organisations, and it was clear the need for a community facility hadn't gone away — so we started developing plans for the site again. The following year we put our arrangement with Hay St Mary's Football Club on a proper footing, entering a 25-year lease for their main pitch where none had existed before.

 

It was our first large community consultation in 2024 — held both in person at Hay Library and online — that really confirmed the need was still there. What we didn't yet know was whether we could build what people were asking for, so we submitted a Pre-Planning Application to BBNPA in May that year and received a very positive response. 

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Things have moved quickly since. In March 2025, a small grant from PAVO let us launch a community growing space — as much as we could manage without planning permission — and it's proved bountiful, producing far more than the volunteer group can use themselves. The following month, Powys CC confirmed that cabinet had approved releasing £200k set aside for a Hay hall many years earlier, though the funding relied on us paying invoices first and claiming the money back, which was hard to manage 

without a secure income stream. Towards the end of 2025, the SR & PH Southall Trust stepped in with a loan to give us a cash buffer, and that's what has let us keep moving towards a planning application. 

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We're now working towards submitting that application before the end of 2026 — the next chapter in a project that's been a long time coming, and one we're all genuinely proud to be part of.