2023-10-26 23:12:14
The All England Lawn Tennis Club wants to hold the Wimbledon Qualifying Tournament on the expanded site
A Wimbledon Championships featuring a new 8,000-seater stadium with retractable roof, and qualifying on site, has moved significantly closer.
Merton Council’s planning committee has granted permission for 39 new courts to be built over the road from the All England Club (AELTC) on the former site of Wimbledon Park Golf Club.
Councillors voted six to four in favour of the scheme in Thursday’s meeting.
But the AELTC still has some hurdles to jump amid strong local opposition.
The meeting was called to an abrupt end following the vote as one spectator in the public gallery shouted that the council chamber had become a “climate crime scene”.
If the plan goes ahead, the new courts are unlikely to be in operation before 2030 at the earliest.
Planning officers had advised the proposals would result in “physical harm” to Metropolitan Open Land, but concluded “very special circumstances” meant “substantial public benefits would clearly outweigh [the] harm”.
About 75 members of the Save Wimbledon Park organisation gathered outside the chamber two hours before the meeting to voice their concern.
“It’s just not tennis,” read one sign. “Stop corporate ecocide,” demanded another.
Before the vote was taken, the plans were called “too big, too harmful,” by one councillor, while another suggested there were “few benefits to anyone but the All England Club”.
However others praised the scheme’s economic benefits and called it “a game-changing application”.
How will Wimbledon change?
The All England Club intends to build 39 new grass courts including an 8,000-seater show-court on land across Church Road which used to be home to Wimbledon Park Golf Club.
Golf club members – including TV presenters Piers Morgan, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly – received £85,000 each when the AELTC bought the remaining 23-year lease for £65m in 2018.
The extra courts will allow Wimbledon qualifying to take place on site – in line with the other three Grand Slams.
The event is currently staged three-and-a-half miles away at the Bank of England Sports Centre in Roehampton, which has many charms but offers sub-standard facilities for the players and can only cater for about 2,000 spectators a day.
In future, up to 10,000 people a day will be able to watch qualifying and up to 50,000 enter the grounds during each day of the main fortnight.
The new show court, standing 28 metres above ground level and surrounded by oak trees, will have climbing plants on the walls. With 8,000 seats and a roof it will meet Wimbledon’s goal for another large show court able to host matches whatever the weather.
The desire to preserve the championship courts means players regularly have to share a practice court at Wimbledon.
That should no longer be necessary, and the All England Club has also promised to double the size of the wheelchair draw, which many feel they could do regardless.
What benefits are promised to the local community?
A new 23-acre public park will be created, with access free and all year round – excluding the weeks of the Championships.
The intention is to recapture some of the original design of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown – the 18th Century landscape architect renowned for his elegant and natural looking landscapes.
Silt will be removed from the lake and a new boardwalk installed. And a minimum of seven of the grass courts will be made available to the local community for the summer weeks which follow Wimbledon.
As well as the benefits to people’s health and wellbeing, Merton Council’s 450-page report concluded the plans would also boost economic growth and create more employment in the local area.
So why was local opposition so strong?
Protesters against the plans gathered before the meeting
Many local residents remain vociferously opposed to the plans.
Stephen Hammond, the Conservative MP for Wimbledon, and Fleur Anderson, the Labour MP for Putney, took the unusual step of declaring their opposition in a joint statement.
The Wimbledon Society describes the proposal as an “industrial tennis complex with an unacceptable environmental impact”, while the Capability Brown Society says the architect’s celebrated park is under threat from a “multi-million pound commercial expansion”.
A petition organised by Save Wimbledon Park – which has concerns about the environmental impact, and the loss of trees and open spaces – has attracted more than 13,000 signatures.
Merton Council recorded 894 objections and some local residents did not hold back during the AETLC’s consultation process.
“An insular and imperial group of expansionists who see little beyond the net,” was one of the more scathing responses.
Another added: “The AELTC is a juggernaut without brakes – a project like this will completely destroy an oasis of space and tranquility.”
People are concerned the new show-court will spoil the view and are worried about the traffic, noise and environmental impact of at least six years of building work.
They complain about the 296 trees which will be removed, although 1,500 new ones will be planted and the AELTC says most of those to be cut down are of poor quality with short life expectancy.
Some worry about the extra spectators that will be able to visit the site every day, others believe the AELTC’s ulterior motive is to build a hotel complex on the site and many remain angered by the fact that Church Road is shut every year during the Championships.
Is it now game, set and match to The All England Club?
There is still hope for those who oppose the decision.
The northernmost part of Wimbledon Park is within the borough of Wandsworth, and its planning committee must also approve the scheme at a meeting which it hopes will take place before the end of the year.
As the development will be taking place on Metropolitan Open Land, the Mayor of London must then formally accept or reject the councils’ decisions.
Sadiq Khan will have two weeks following Wandsworth’s decision to deliver his verdict. He could also opt to take over the application himself – a course of action also within the power of Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
However, perhaps the biggest threat to the AELTC’s plans is the possibility of judicial review.
With the feelings of some affluent local residents running high, an attempt could be made to challenge the lawfulness of the way the decision was made – on the grounds of illegality, procedural unfairness or irrationality.
But the bar remains high, as only a very small number of these cases succeed each year.
A 30-year-old legal covenant may also form part of a challenge. When the freehold of the golf course was transferred from Merton Council to the AELTC in 1993, the club agreed “not to use the [land] other than for leisure or recreational purposes or as an open space”.
This will have to be resolved before any work can begin on a development which the All England Club hopes will keep Wimbledon at the “pinnacle of the sport”.
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