The High Court hearing that will determine whether the All England Lawn Tennis Club can build 39 grass courts and a 8,000-seat show court on protected parkland begins today, with campaigners calling it a watershed moment for London’s green spaces.
Save Wimbledon Park supporters are gathering at the Royal Courts of Justice from 8am as the six-day statutory trust case gets under way, backed by national environmental groups who see the case as setting a crucial precedent for how councils can sell protected land.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England’s (CPRE) London branch, which helped establish National Parks and green belts, said the case will determine whether councils can sell parks without proper safeguards. “Should councils have unfettered powers to sell parks? We say no,” said its head of campaigns, Alice Roberts.
“London’s parks are not for sale.”
The case follows the Supreme Court’s 2023 Day v Shropshire ruling, which established that when councils sell protected land without proper consultation, public rights survive the sale. Dr Peter Day, who brought that landmark case, said the Wimbledon Park situation is similar: “Where a local authority had sold land subject to a trust but had failed to comply with the necessary requirements including advertising the fact, the rights of the public under the statutory trust have not been extinguished.”
The Wimbledon Society has backed Save Wimbledon Park’s position. “We have worked closely with the Save Wimbledon Park campaign for many years and now welcome the opportunity to test our long-held view that the land is safeguarded by a statutory recreation trust,” said chair Kevin O’Neil.
Local resident and writer Andy Hamilton, who has opposed the development, described the AELTC’s plans bluntly:
“They are going to decimate the park, at huge cost to the local environment and the local community.”
He continued: “The real reason is the club just wants to triple the size of the current Wimbledon tennis estate so that they can bring in more visitors and make a very rich private members club even richer.”
What the tennis club is arguing
The AELTC will counter that the former golf course was always treated as private land. The club points to a 1950s Ministry of Health agreement stating the golf course “had development value and was held for revenue purposes, rather than for public statutory powers.”
Legal commentators note the club appears to have shifted its position since 2023, when it initially agreed with Save Wimbledon Park’s analysis. The AELTC’s argument rests heavily on a 1961 lease, which it says was too large and too long to fall within the powers of the Wimbledon Corporation Act 1914. If that lease took the land outside the 1914 Act’s protections, the club argues, no public recreation rights were ever created.
However, that 1961 lease included Wimbledon Park Lake, which has been used by anglers since 1948 and by sailors for decades. Under the AELTC’s legal logic, the lake would also have lost its protected status and become private land in 1961, a result legal observers have raised their eyebrows over given generations of public use.
The tennis club has conceded that if the statutory trust is found to exist, its £200 million expansion plans cannot proceed.
Mr Justice Thompsell will hear evidence until 23 January, with a written judgment expected within two to three months.
