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…
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