by The mayor of London’s office is leading the decision on whether to approve controversial plans by the All England Lawn Tennis Club to build on a Grade II* listed field to expand the Wimbledon grand slam championships.
“This is a major planning application, of London-wide significance,” a city hall spokesman said on Monday. “Therefore, the deputy mayor has issued a directive under article 7 of the Town and Country Planning (Mayor of London) Order that he will become the local planning authority to determine the application. A full planning hearing will be held in due course.”
The AELTC, which has run the championships since 1877, has applied for permission to build an 8,000-seat, 10-storey exhibition court and 38 other grass courts on Wimbledon Park, but campaigners have criticized it as an “industrial tennis complex”.
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Merton council approved the proposals to almost triple the size of the tennis championships, from 17 hectares (42 acres) to 46 hectares, but neighboring Wandsworth council refused.
Wimbledon Park, which was landscaped by Capability Brown in the 18th century and is under special protection as “municipal open land”, extends into both boroughs so both councils must approve it for the plans to go ahead.
Merton referred the decision to the Greater London Authority (GLA). The decision officially rests with the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, but he himself recused himself because he publicly supported the expansion in 2021.
The deputy mayor of London, Jules Pipe, made the decision to take control of the application at the mayor’s planning meeting on Monday.
More than 16,000 people have signed a petition to “Save Wimbledon Park” and councils have received 2,000 letters of objection. Local Conservative MP Stephen Hammond and Labor MP Fleur Anderson also joined forces to oppose the AELTC’s plans.
Anderson, the MP for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields and Wandsworth Town, said: “I have been campaigning against these proposals, along with residents, for the past three years. The current plans are bad for public access to green space, the lungs of Londoners and our environment.
“The GLA is a world-leading local authority in putting the health of Londoners and our environment first. I hope they tell Wimbledon Tennis they need to go back to the drawing board.”
Deborah Jevans, chair of the AELTC, welcomed the city hall’s decision to review the application. “Our proposals will deliver one of the biggest sporting changes to London since the 2012 Olympics,” she said. “It will bring the qualifying event to the venue, in line with the other grand slams, and ensure Wimbledon remains one of the world’s premier sporting events.”
Jevans said the club’s plans would unlock year-round community benefits including a new 23-acre park to be created on land that has not been accessible to the public for over 100 years”.
“Protecting the future of the championships, as well as significantly increasing publicly accessible green space, is a victory for Londoners and will undoubtedly demonstrate that London is the sporting capital of the world.”
The announcement was also welcomed by Iain Simpson, chairman of the Save Wimbledon Park (SWP) campaign group. He said: “It is noteworthy that all political parties declared their opposition to the plans of the AELTC. SWP has been fighting this request since it was made three years ago. We are urging the AELTC to talk to us, their local communities: it is time for them to think again.”
Almost 300 trees would be removed to allow the AELTC’s building plans, which some locals described as “corporate ecocide”. The club said most of the trees were of “poor quality” and pledged to plant 1,500 new trees.
The AELTC began its expansion into Wimbledon Park in 1993 when it bought the freehold of the land from Merton council for £5.2m. But he signed a covenant agreeing that he “would not use the [land] other than for leisure or recreational purposes or as open space”.
The club leased land to Wimbledon Park golf club until 2018 when its chairman said he feared the SW19 championships would fall behind rivals in New York, Paris and Melbourne if it did not expand and offer facilities more for players and spectators. The obvious place to expand, he said, was the golf club.
However, the golf club’s lease on the land ran until 2041, so the AELTC was unable to take the land back for another 23 years. The tennis club offered members of the golf club £65m to bring their club up early. That worked out to a windfall of £85,000 for each member, including Piers Morgan, Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, and Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary.
