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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Newcastle and across the UK. A good deal of our work involves high-volume multi-court facilities where polyurethane and synthetic systems outperform timber on cost of ownership.
Our clients are schools, academy trusts, universities, leisure operators, councils and clubs, and have been since 1987. We cover the full lifecycle of a floor with our own team rather than a chain of subcontractors. Private homes are outside our scope and are served by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Polyurethane is frequently the right answer for a hall running continuous multi-sport sessions. It is seamless, tolerates furniture and trolleys, cleans easily, and needs no sanding cycle across its life.
The trade-off is that when a synthetic surface finally wears out it is replaced rather than renewed, whereas timber can be sanded and resealed repeatedly. We set both routes out with realistic lifecycle costs rather than steering you toward whichever suits us.
A poured polyurethane system is only as good as the substrate beneath it. The slab has to be sound, level within tolerance, and dry enough that vapour will not push through the finished surface and blister it.
We test, prepare and where necessary level the substrate before any system goes down, and specify a barrier where moisture readings demand one. Skipping that stage is the commonest cause of a seamless floor failing within its first few years.
Synthetic floors are lower maintenance than timber, not maintenance-free. The commonest problem is entirely self-inflicted: the wrong cleaning chemicals leaving a film that dulls the surface and makes it slippery.
Our maintenance service covers deep cleaning to lift residue, patch repairs, re-welding of failed seams and, where the system allows, resealing to restore appearance and grip. We also set the routine for your own team.
The sports hall at St George’s had a Granwood block floor that decades of use had left dull and tired. Granwood cannot be sanded like timber, so we restored it correctly: careful preparation, a modified epoxy coating system and crisp new markings.
The school kept a serviceable floor out of a skip and spent a fraction of what replacement would have cost.
~ Matthew Evans
An outstanding company to deal with and they couldn’t have been better to work with. St George’s Ascot now has a stunning new sports hall floor and we are delighted. From quote, support, delivery and after sales, the Team has been brilliant. Thank you. 
~ James Anderson
Commercial and public buildings need documentation, and providing it in advance rather than on request is part of what distinguishes a specialist contractor.
Before the work you receive method statements and risk assessments specific to the job rather than a generic template, COSHH data sheets for every product we will bring on site, and copies of our public liability and employers liability insurance.
For school sites we provide DBS details for the staff attending, and we work to whatever additional safeguarding arrangements the school or trust requires. Our teams are used to signing in, wearing identification and staying within agreed areas.
On main contractor sites we work to site rules, attend inductions and provide progress reporting in whatever format the contract requires.
At handover you get the product data sheets, the cure times in writing, aftercare guidance and, where requested, the pendulum slip resistance certificate. It goes into the facilities file as a complete record rather than a folder of assurances.
The complaint we hear most about other contractors is the variation that appears once the old finish comes off, so we price to avoid it.
Our quotations are broken down by element rather than given as a single figure. Preparation, sanding, board repairs, sealing, line marking and testing are each priced separately. If the budget will not stretch this year you can see exactly which part to defer rather than losing the whole scheme.
Because we survey properly, we know what is likely to appear once the floor is bare, and we allow for it in the quotation as expected work rather than presenting it later as an extra. The only things we would ever come back to you about are genuinely unforeseeable, and in twenty years that has been rare.
We also quote alternatives where they exist. If a screen and recoat will do what you need instead of a full sand, we will price both and tell you which we would choose. We would rather quote the cheaper option and see you again in five years.
Almost every hall we work in has a stage, and it is usually in worse condition than the hall floor because of what gets dragged across it.
Stages are often a different construction and a different timber from the room they sit in, sometimes with a hollow void beneath for resonance. That changes how they are sanded and what they can take, and it is worth knowing before a machine goes on.
The finish is a different decision too. A matt or dead matt seal kills the reflections that stage lighting otherwise produces, and it hides the scuffing that scenery and staging leave. Some venues want a stage that can be painted for productions, which changes the specification again and needs discussing at the outset rather than afterwards.
We generally recommend doing the stage at the same time as the hall. It costs considerably less than two separate visits, it gives a consistent appearance, and the stage is usually the part that most needs it.
University sports facilities have a particular problem: they are busy year round, so the long summer shutdown that schools rely on does not exist.
Term brings curriculum use, club training and league fixtures. The summer brings conferences, summer schools and external hire, which is often more lucrative than term time use. The window for work is therefore narrow, defined and non negotiable.
The way we handle it is by planning to the window rather than hoping to fit inside it. We survey early, order materials in advance, staff the job properly rather than spreading a team across sites, and build the cure times into the programme rather than treating them as slack.
Campus estates usually hold several floors of different ages: a main sports hall, studios, squash courts and a fitness suite, often built decades apart. A condition survey across all of them, with a phased programme, is generally far more useful than dealing with each as it becomes urgent.
Newcastle gives us university and college sport, city leisure facilities and a substantial number of school sports halls, across a wide range of building ages.
University facilities are busy year round, with the summer filled by conference and external use rather than standing empty, so the working windows are narrow and do not move. Those projects are planned months ahead and staffed to complete inside them.
Leisure centres follow, where booking income means most work is carried out overnight, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening time.
School and academy halls make up the largest group by number, many from the nineteen sixties and seventies with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but overdue a refinish.
The older stock in the region includes a good deal of Granwood, particularly in school and church halls. It needs a specialist approach rather than timber sanding, and a Granwood floor with sound blocks and an intact bed is almost always worth restoring at a fraction of the cost of replacement.
Newcastle enquiries cluster around a few recurring situations.
The first is a post war school hall whose floor has been recoated repeatedly but never taken back to bare timber. Those accumulated layers eventually cloud, peel at the edges and lift, and adding another coat simply postpones the inevitable.
The second is Granwood, which appears regularly in school and church halls across the region and is frequently written off unnecessarily. Sound blocks and an intact bed mean restoration, at a fraction of the cost of a replacement that would also mean lifting a bitumen bed.
The third is university and leisure facilities where the floor is heavily used but structurally fine, and the question is timing. Those want catching on a screen and recoat cycle before the seal goes through, which is far cheaper than a full refinish and preserves the boards.
A good proportion of the relining we do is because a hall is being asked to do something different from what it was marked for.
Pickleball is the obvious recent example. It shares its footprint with badminton, so adding it is usually a matter of the kitchen lines and a centre service line rather than a whole new court. Walking netball, short mat bowls and indoor cricket all turn up for the same reason: a facility has picked up a new user group and the floor has not caught up.
The temptation is to add the new sport on top of everything already there. In a hall that already carries five sets of markings that makes the floor genuinely hard to use, so we would rather look at the whole scheme and take something off at the same time.
We will ask what is actually played now, in what proportion, and set out a hierarchy where the sport used most gets the clearest colour and the most visual weight. Fewer lines, correctly dimensioned, beats more lines every time.
We quote fixed prices after a free survey rather than estimates over the phone. The main variables are the size of the floor, how much preparation it needs and whether repairs or sub-floor work are required. All of it is itemised in writing.
Comprehensively. We have delivered projects from Cornwall to the north of Scotland, and the approach does not change: survey, agree, price, then complete the work in a single visit.
Yes, where replacement is genuinely necessary. Strip-out, disposal and sub-floor preparation are all included in the quotation rather than added later.
No. Courtship Flooring is a commercial contractor working on large-scale sports and institutional floors. Private homes are handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations.
None of it. The team that surveys the hall carries out every stage through to the final coat and returns for maintenance, which means one warranty covering the whole system.
Yes. We work as the specialist flooring element within refurbishment schemes and are used to main contractor site rules, inductions, permits and progress reporting.
Yes. We survey the slab for level and moisture first, install mitigation where readings require it, and specify the system to the actual timetable of the hall rather than to a standard answer.
Yes. We deep clean, reseal, remark and fully recoat synthetic sports surfaces, and a PU floor recoated in a fresh colour with new markings looks like a new installation for a fraction of the cost.
Constantly. Summer holidays and half terms are when most of our school work happens, and summer slots book up early. If you are planning for next year it is worth speaking to us in January rather than June.
An area elastic floor deflects across a wide area when loaded, which suits ball sports. A point elastic floor deflects only where loaded, which suits fitness and dance. Combined systems provide both.
Sealed vacuum extraction on all machines including edge equipment, screening of the working area, and agreement with your site team on isolating doors and air handling routes.
Book a free survey of your floor in Newcastle and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.