Campaign Group Hopes Wimbledon Expansion Plans Are Called Out

As Great Britain’s Cameron Norrie took on the role of hapless underdog against the heavy favorite Carlos Alcaraz on Centre Court today, another David and Goliath battle was taking place in the High Court. A group of 100 or so campaigners from the Save Wimbledon Park group made their presence felt outside legal chambers in London to protest against the All England Club’s £200 million ($270m) expansion plans for the Wimbledon site.

The campaigners have raised over £200,000 ( $253k) to bring a judicial review of the Greater London Authority’s decision to rubberstamp AELTC’s plans to build 39 courts, including an 8,000-seater show court. The hearing takes places on July 8 and July 9, just as the business end of the Championships comes to the climax. The last four days of the tournament are taking place in temperatures touching 30 degrees as the latest stage of the battle over the expansion heats up in the Courts.

Most of the park lies within Merton, but a small triangle falls into neighboring borough Wandsworth, which rejected the Wimbledon expansion. This meant the umpire’s chair on decision-making went to the deputy mayor. The plan was given the go-ahead last September when Jules Pipe pronounced it would bring “significant benefits.”

Although the GLA acknowledged there would be harm to open metropolitan land and a loss of green space, the estimated $450 million in annual and economic benefits, mostly centred within London, was a huge factor in pushing it through.

Save Wimbledon Park’s challenge is not based around the permission of the project, but rather centers on “errors of law and planning policy” in giving it approval. Metropolitan open land is subject to the same protection as green belt. Campaigners argue that to give the green light would pave the way for more private commercial developments to trample over other vulnerable spaces.

The sitting judge will also make a decision on whether neglect of the Grade II* registered Park and Garden, a significant heritage site, should have been considered when making the planning decision. It will evaluate whether the proposed private tennis development falls short in offering an ‘alternative sports and recreational’ space for public use.

The AELTC originally submitted the plans in 2021, having finalized the purchase of the £65,000 ($80k) leasehold of the former Wimbledon Park Golf Club which was the key piece of land to expand on.

Wimbledon is currently a 42-acre site but aims to almost triple in size to 117. This will encompass an increased ground capacity to 50,000 to bring the qualifying – currently played in Roehampton Community Sports Centre three miles away – onsite to give the tournament continuity and quality in terms of player and spectator experience. The U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open all have qualifying within the same complex.

The All England Club has always maintained that the greater benefits of the project outweigh the environmental impacts. The club has held numerous walkthroughs of the site with the general public and maintain feedback from forums have been hugely positive about the prospect of a new accessible boardwalk around Wimbledon Park Lake, and community use of the proposed new courts and facilities.

AELTC’s Corporate Affairs Lead Dominic Foster reiterated what he told me last year: “Our plans to transform what has been a private members golf course for more than 100 years will maintain Wimbledon’s position at the pinnacle of sport and create year round benefits for local people. The proposals will deliver very significant biodiversity benefits which are endorsed by the London Wildlife Trust.”

During the first week of Wimbledon, campaigners were handing out leaflets that were entitled ‘Love Tennis. Hate Concrete’. SWP claim that the entire area of expansion would be heavily excavated, leading to a 36 per cent loss of biodiversity, a destruction of wildlife and air pollution from construction lorries. The project has a completion date of 2033 at the latest.

“You could not have a more protected piece of land in London,” said Sascha White KC, representing Save Wimbledon Park in the judicial review. When it acquired the freehold of the 18-hole golf course in 1993, the AELTC entered into an agreement with Merton Council “preventing the use of the land otherwise than for leisure or recreation purposes or as an open space.” SWP believe that the land should be held in some kind of public trust “requiring it to be kept available for (public) recreational use” in line with the whole of the park and lake

Russell Harris KC, representing the All England Club, countered by arguing that planning officers acknowledged the trust and covenants, but decided they were not material to the application. He said the GLA could legally grant permission “even if the development is incompatible with a different, non-planning restriction on the use of the land.”

A written decision is expected in the next fortnight as this latest saga on Wimbledon’s expansion moves towards match point or a deadlock. If SWP’s action is successful on any of its main points, the planning application will be sent back for reconsideration.

The campaign has called it a “David and Goliath” battle. The AELTC are quietly confident that their big plans will see the light of another day while SWP hope to stop the “huge industrial tennis complex” steamrollering their concerns. Norrie might know how that feels after being blasted off court by Alcaraz.