Sir Ben Ainslie is Wimbledon's trump card in expansion row

Telegraph

07-07-2025

Sir Ben Ainslie is a trump card for Wimbledon 's proposed expansion on the eve of the High Court hearing into the plans.
Ahead of Save Wimbledon Park's challenge on Tuesday of the All England Club's £200 million development proposals, it can be revealed Britain's most successful Olympic sailor has thrown his weight behind the scheme.
Ainslie's involvement centres around the sailing club on the sculpted lake that stands at the centre of the park, with the local resident saying: 'I would love to muck in and see it become a real success.'
And the AELTC believes Ainslie's potential assistance could be a huge boost to a scheme that has been mired in legal and planning disputes since 2018, when they announced plans to build 39 new courts on Wimbledon Park Golf Course – land they already owned.
'The problem with the lake is that the water quality is so low,' Ainslie told Telegraph Sport, in reference to the fertilisers and pesticides that have accumulated through more than a century's worth of golf-course maintenance. 'If you capsize there, it's not a nice thought, and I personally wouldn't consider taking that risk.
'The investment required to clean up the lake is not going to happen through local government. It will require private means – and that's where the All England Club comes in.
'It's a great opportunity and a beautiful lake. There's a small sailing club there, next to where my son went to nursery, and the AELTC would spend a considerable amount of money on upgrading the club and its facilities. They would also desilt the lake, clean up the water, and extend the boardwalk around the perimeter. It would be a huge positive, not only for sailors but for anglers and swimmers as well.'
Ainslie added: 'With two young kids in the area under the age of eight, I would be there in a heartbeat if it suddenly becomes a much more pleasurable place to sail. At the moment, the closest venue is probably Queen Mary Sailing Club, out past Heathrow.'
The AELTC says that Ainslie's possible involvement in a rebooted Wimbledon Park Sailing Club would be another advantage in a long list of benefits to the local community
'With this weather, you think, how wonderful would it be to have that park clean for people just to paddle in it, swim in it,' said the AELTC's chair Debbie Jevans.
'The sailing club use the lake at the moment but the area they have access to is greatly reduced because of the silting up. We are planning to restore it to its original shape, which means expanding the surface area by almost 3000 square metres.'
Emblematic of a broader problem in Britain
In many ways, talking about a sailing club as being integral to the development of a tennis facility sums up the faintly ludicrous nature of the debate over Wimbledon's plans. The AELTC owns the land, and in 2018 paid £65 million to buy out the remainder of Wimbledon Park Golf Club's lease, which would have run to 2041.
That it has not progressed its plans is emblematic of a broader problem in Britain: a turgid planning system, which so often seems to work against anyone attempting to build or grow anything, big or small.
In this case, the objectors say that the expansion will create an 'industrial-scale tennis complex' on the old golf-course land. They also claim the erection of a proposed 8,000-seat 'Parkland' stadium breaks a covenant established under the reign of John Curry, the last-but-two chairman, that the AELTC would not build on the site.
The AELTC, which is nonplussed by the emotive language used by the protestors, sees it as a sensitively designed expanse of tennis lawns, plus a maintenance hub that will be dug into the ground at no little expense to reduce its visual impact.
Tennis insiders agree that the club desperately needs new facilities to keep up with the galloping pace of development at the other three major tournaments: the Australian, French and US Opens.
In particular, the AELTC is frustrated by its inability to host qualifying – a preliminary event in which 256 lower-ranked men and women are whittled down to 32 main-draw entrants.
Grand slam events are mostly becoming three-week affairs thanks to the increasing appeal of these qualifying events, which most recently attracted 219,000 spectators in New York, 116,000 in Melbourne and 102,000 in Paris. In addition, Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz's much-anticipated pairing in mixed doubles will take place at Flushing Meadows the week before the US Open, an event that promises to bring a younger audience into the grounds.
But Wimbledon cannot consider either qualifying or a doubles equivalent on site, because it would exhaust the grass courts before the start of the tournament proper. As a result, their qualifying event is held at Roehampton, on what used to be the Bank of England Sports Ground. The site cannot handle more than 5,000 fans per day, which adds up to 20,000 in total.
'That third week is an opportunity for the community,' explained Jevans. 'Our ballot is oversubscribed, with more than a million applications for a tournament that can accommodate a little over 500,000 across the fortnight. Were qualifying to move onsite then more of the public would be able to come in, see the players, engage, walk around.
'Also, you could have community events, like the Kid's Day that Tennis Australia puts on. The US Open has now moved its mixed-doubles event to that preliminary week. To me, it's a win-win. Things don't stand still, and at the moment, we have an inability to evolve.'
Nimbyism a common feature of planning dramas
This week's judicial review will not debate whether the AELTC's plans are the best use for the land. Instead, the SWPs crowd-funded case is arguing the Greater London Authority failed to follow the proper procedures when it granted planning permission for the Wimbledon expansion in September.
Whatever the result, it can still be appealed to the Supreme Court at a later date. And this is not the only hurdle that the AELTC must clear, before initiating work on land that was vacated by golfers as long ago as December 2022.
A separate case is due to be held in January, in order to decide whether the golf course is subject to a 'statutory trust' that precludes development. The problem for the AELTC is that Wimbledon Park is considered to be Metropolitan Open Land (MOL), which is subject to similar legal protections to the green belt.
This does seem illogical, given that the proposed development is scheduled for land that hasn't been open to the public in living memory, thanks to the gates of a private golf course. But that is the state of the planning system in Britain, one that is seen time and again for schemes well beyond the manicured lawns of SW19.
A report by the Home Builders' Federation last month warned the number of new homes in England given planning permission had slipped to a 'disastrous' low. The figures pointed to both a decline in planning applications and a slow decision time on those that are made.
At the other end of the scale, ambitious infrastructure projects have found themselves mired in costly delays for years. More than half end up in the courts, causing an average hold-up of 18 months and adding millions of pounds in expense.
So-called nimbyism is a common feature of these planning dramas, with local residents and campaigners mounting time-consuming challenges similar to those affecting the ongoing Wimbledon case.
'The idea that you can't build tennis courts at Wimbledon is probably the most extreme example of our planning system not working,' says Sam Dumitrio, head of policy at Britain Remade, a campaign to promote economic growth.
The obstacles the scheme has faced are symptomatic of the various ways in which the system can seem rigged against development. In Wimbledon's case, an application for the proposed development was originally accepted by Merton Council but the fact that a 'tiny bit' of the land fell within Wandsworth boundaries enabled that council to block it – a mark of how many different players are able to exert a veto and 'throw sand in the gears of the development', according to Dumitrio.
The listing of the proposed expansion site as Metropolitan Open Land has another important impact – opponents of the plans have their legal costs capped due to MOL legislation.
'So it's very easy to bring these legal cases,' says Dumitrio. 'The thing I really find concerning is the ability of people not accept[ing] a legal decision on planning who will fight it to the highest courts in the land. This is a problem not just in Wimbledon but in general.'
'They're putting things out there that are untrue'
There could be a short-cut in the offing in this case. Jevans told Telegraph Sport that she has been engaging with the government over the upcoming planning and infrastructure bill, which is currently passing through the Houses of Parliament. But the chances of a useful extra clause being inserted, specifically to deal with this anomaly, seem slim. 'They've got a lot on their plate,' she said.
Her suspicion is that it will take until the end of 2026 to resolve all the remaining legal issues and start work on the long-abandoned site. Even then, it would still take five or six years for the new grass courts to bed down, leaving us with a best-case opening date of 2033.
It could be argued that the AELTC should have done more to disarm any potential critics early in this process. It could perhaps have offered more enticements to locals – in terms of access to facilities – which might have offset the nuisance value of extended building works.
But the plans have stopped a long way short of some of the more outlandish suggestions – which saw one newspaper mock up a graphic of the site featuring a helipad, a multi-storey carpark and a shopping centre – and they also restore public access to land which is now little use to anyone, being locked away behind iron gates while the planning battle chugs on.
Furthermore, Jevans disputes some of the objectors' claims. 'I've read today that all of a sudden we're cutting down 2000 trees,' she said. 'It was 800, it's now 2000, and so it's not based on any data.
'When the chap from the Wildlife Trust stood up at the GLA hearing and said that the developments were going to deliver ecological improvement, it turned out that Save Wimbledon Park group hadn't submitted any data at all. They just said there was going to be environmental damage.
'Even the name of the group isn't accurate, because we're actually increasing Wimbledon Park by 30 per cent. The rest of the plans involve taking over a private golf course, and then hosting qualifying on it. So I think that's the challenge. They're just putting things out there that are simply untrue.'
Ultimately, Tuesday's High Court date is easily the biggest match the AELTC is involved in during this year's Wimbledon. Whether it emerges victorious could have a huge impact on whether Wimbledon remains one of Britain's pre-eminent events.