THREE Cumbrian sports venues have new artificial pitches supplied by the company that is providing the playing surface for the 2018 World Cup final.

SIS Pitches, of Maryport, has installed synthetic pitches at Lillyhall's Lakes College, Whitehaven Amateur FC and Richard Rose Central Academy in Carlisle.

The three sites all had pitches laid ready for the new season and school term.

The move marks a boost for local sport clubs with increased participation and facility improvements high on the agenda.

Whitehaven AFC's renovation is part of a half-a-million- pound project that aims to help increase participation in girls' football by more than 70 per cent.

Bill Robson, club chairman at Whithaven AFC, said: “The upgrading of our 3G pitch is a major but very necessary undertaking for our club to ensure sporting provision well into the future.”

SIS Pitches, which employs around 40 staff, has been installing more than 25,000sq metres of synthetic turf at Cumbrian venues in the past two months.

Ged Knight, manufacturing director at the company's factory at Glasson Industrial Estate, said: "SIS Pitches delivers high quality synthetic pitches across the globe but we are very proud to be working on projects that will benefit our local area immensely.

“As a business we are passionate about sport in Cumbria and to see the difference the new facilities make to people at home, is very satisfying for everyone involved at the factory.”

SIS Pitches has won contracts all over the world from Moscow to Turkey, Baku to England's St George's Park.

In August, the firm announced it had been awarded the contract to lay a grass pitch for the 2018 World Cup final, to be played at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.

Building work on the stadium will last 12 months while the company designs the pitch subsurface structure ready for installation next summer.

Due to the harsh Russian winter, it will involve a system of aeration, drainage, irrigation and heating.

The company has also signed a two-year deal to maintain the pitch.