All eyes will be on the courts at the All England Lawn Tennis Club when Wimbledon returns for a two-week tennis extravaganza on Monday – but there is another equally fierce competition happening behind the scenes too.
The Grand Slam runs from July 1 to July 14, bringing thousands of fans to SW19 for the iconic tournament where well-dressed people will eat their strawberries and cream, gulp their champagne and watch some world-class tennis. Yet all is not rosy in the plush streets around the site, with a battle for the competition’s future continuing.
The AELTC wants to expand the tournament by building 38 new grass courts and a 8,000-seat show court across Church Road on the site of what used to be Wimbledon Park Golf Club, in order to bring qualifying on site. They bought the land from Merton Council in 1993 for £5.1million and, in 2018, the golf club – whose members included Ant and Dec and Piers Morgan – accepted a £65m offer to end its lease early, netting every member £85,000.
Plans were submitted which included a 23-acre public park, which was hoped would smooth over things for the locals. But that it did not go to plan, with local residents and politicians immediately kicking up a fuss to slow the process down.
Fleur Anderson, Labour MP for Putney, Southfields and Roehampton, summed up the mood in an interview with Mirror Sport last year, in which she said: “It’s the AELTC having a land grab for an industrial development and trying to make it look as though it’s a nice project for a new park, which it’s not.”
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Iain Simpson, chairman of the Wimbledon Park Residents Association, added: “The size of the development is just totally unacceptable. It’s a ridiculous application.” Those objections worked and Wandsworth Borough Council rejected the proposal.
That prompted the Mayor of London to get involved. In January a spokesperson for City Hall confirmed that Sadiq Khan’s office were taking over the case, because it involved “a major planning application, of London-wide significance”.
The plans include an 8,000-seater show court (Allies & Morrison / AELTC)In May, the AELTC announced plans to increase the size of the park from 23 acres to 27 acres, in an effort at finding a compromise over the £200m scheme. They have also pointed to an estimated economic boost of over £300m after the completion of the project, which will also create more than 250 new jobs.
Deborah Jevans CBE, Chair of the All England Club, said, “Our plans to transform the former Wimbledon Park Golf Course will deliver one of the greatest sporting transformations for London since 2012. We are committed to delivering significant social, economic, and environmental improvements, creating hundreds of jobs and generating millions of pounds in economic benefits.”
Unfortunately for the AELTC, there is cross-party opposition to the plans, with Labour’s Anderson joined by Conservative MP for Wimbledon, Stephen Hammond, in expressing concerns over the plans. Writing a joint letter in the Evening Standard last month, they said: “If this development were allowed to proceed it would set a dangerous precedent.”
The Mayor’s office is expected to review the application in the coming months before making a decision. But, for now, there will remain tensions in SW19 during the world-famous tournament.
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