Controversial plans to expand the All England Club’s grounds, which host the Wimbledon championships, have been approved by local council leaders.
Merton council’s development and planning application committee voted on Thursday night to approve the application to expand the tennis complex.
A spokesperson for the south-west London borough said in a statement: “After considering the officer’s report, relevant submissions, and the relevant planning framework, the independent planning committee, made up of councillors from all parties, voted to approve the application made by the All England Lawn Tennis Ground (AELTG) for expansion of its site at Wimbledon.”
The meeting in south London, which lasted more than four hours, was told that Merton council had received over 2,000 letters of objection – with claims that designs for the new show court and 38 other grass courts were in breach of a covenant that prevents building on the Grade II* listed parkland.
Stephen Hammond, the Conservative MP for Wimbledon, said he wanted to see a new application that would benefit the AELTC and the community and described the current proposals as “inappropriate” due to planned building on the park.
A representative of the Save Wimbledon Park group had told the meeting that hundreds of trees will be felled as a result of the proposals and called it an “aggressive inappropriate commercial development”. AELTC said new trees would be planted.
Sally Bolton, CEO of the AELTC, told the meeting their vision would deliver “one of the biggest sporting transformations for London since the 2012 Olympics”. She warned there was a significant risk of SW19 falling behind other grand slams as it was the only one to host the qualifying event at a different venue, in Roehampton. She also cited increased tourism and more jobs as other benefits to the local economy.
The All England Club has long had its sights on expanding on to the golf course. Growth and modernisation, its executives say, is the only way to keep the world’s oldest and most prestigious championship ahead of its grand slam rivals.
The approved plan will mean the estate almost triples in size, with more grass courts and higher crowd capacity. The club will also be able to build more money-spinning corporate hospitality facilities on its existing land.
By comparison the US Open, in New York, spent £465m on its second show court, the Louis Armstrong – now a 14,061-seat venue, in addition to the championship’s main Arthur Ashe stadium, which has 22,547 seats, 90 luxury corporate suites, five restaurants and a two-storey players’ lounge. Wimbledon’s centre court has 14,979 seats and no corporate boxes.
The plans include a 95-metre long, 28-metre high, 8,000-seat “Parkland show court” on the land designed by the landscape architect Capability Brown for the first Earl Spencer in 1768, as well as 38 ground courts, several ancillary buildings and 9.4km of roads and paths on the protected land.
When it bought the freehold of the golf course from Merton borough council for £5.2m in 1993, the All England Club agreed to a legal covenant “preventing the use of the land otherwise than for leisure or recreation purposes or as an open space”.
The club rented the land to Wimbledon Park Golf Club on a lease due to expire in 2041. However, eager to expand the championships and accommodate preliminary matches on site, the tennis club offered the golf club members £65m to buy out the lease and expand its footprint.
Golf club members, who included TV presenters Piers Morgan, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, and former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell, voted in favour of the deal in 2018 and each collected a £85,000 windfall.
It promised campaigners that the show court would be “a world-class building matching the beauty of its surroundings and paying tribute to the site’s rich history” and said it would enhance its “tennis in an English garden” image.
But Liberal Democrat councillors proposed a motion last year that would have required the council to “enforce” the covenants and prevent the stadium from being built. The motion was supported by Conservative councillors.
However, Labour members, who hold the majority on the council, amended the motion to state that the covenants “need to be respected” rather than enforced.
