Footballers are celebrating this week after winning funding worth nearly half-a-million pounds.

Hythe has been given a grant of £435,078 by the Football Foundation, the UK’s largest sports charity.

The cash will allow Hythe Town Council to develop a sports pavilion and additional football pitches at South Road Recreation Ground.

The dilapidated pavilion will be demolished and replaced by a two-storey building, which will incorporate four changing rooms, two match officials’ changing rooms and toilets for spectators, which include two wheelchair accessible toilets. It will also feature a lift, an equipment store, a kitchen, a store room and a communal room.

The pitches will be reconfigured to provide two full-size football pitches, one junior size pitch, two mini-soccer pitches and a cricket square.

The Mayor of Hythe, Alan Ewart-James, said: “I am extremely pleased that we have been awarded this grant. We are now able to move ahead and to provide first class sporting facilities for the people of Hythe.”

Hythe councillor Richard Carroll, chairman of the sports pavilion sub committee, said he was “thrilled”.

He said: “This is fantastic news for Hythe and indeed the whole of Shepway.

“Hythe Town Council will now be able to provide what will probably be one of the finest sporting facilities in Kent and beyond. Although the emphasis has been on football, the Football Foundation was very keen to encompass other sports, and certainly the cricketers will also have facilities of which they can be proud.

“Within the new pavilion there will be space for other sports, including tennis and bowls, to use it for training and for committee meetings.”