Local residents turned up in Wimbledon Park at dawn this morning wearing giant ears, launching a protest on the opening day of the Championships against a tennis club that, they say, refuses to listen.
Around 5,000 people were already in the park sleeping in their bags, waiting for the queue to move. Twenty to thirty of them walked over.
The All England Club has planning permission to develop the park. It formally rejected a residents’ compromise plan two weeks ago, with club chair Debbie Jevans saying it ‘simply doesn’t work’ and ruling out further talks.
This morning’s protest was Save Wimbledon Park’s response: ear props, chants (No stadium in our park; You cannot be serious; a McEnroe reference; Green not greed; Love tennis, hate concrete; Broken promises), and Simon Wright, one of the campaign’s directors, doing interviews on the grass while Wimbledon’s opening day got underway around him.
The sceptic in the queue
Among those who walked over was Seb Doherty, in his twenties, who had arrived at 8pm the previous evening. He was queue number 2,291. He was not sympathetic.
‘8,000 more tickets means 8,000 extra people get to watch tennis,’ he told Wright. ‘If you can move a court which has twenty people on it to eight thousand, that’s an extra load of supporters, an extra load of people that actually get to watch Wimbledon.’
Wright answered each point. On tickets offered as compensation to local residents: ‘It doesn’t make up for building on Metropolitan Open Land, which is the same as greenbelt. You can’t buy people off like that.’ On the proposed court layout: ‘Their plans do not align the courts north-south. What they’ve done is laid them higgledy-piggledy in order to cram them in.’ On what local people lose: ‘We lose the park for a month at the moment because it takes them a long time to set it up and take it down again. If it’s a three-week event, we then lose the park for five weeks. And that’s all the local football teams, all the local rugby teams, all the exercise groups. None of them can use the park.’
Doherty left unconvinced but thoughtful. ‘It just seems that they’re very happy to do things but they’re not happy to do it when it’s right next to them.’
Five years
Save Wimbledon Park have 20,000 signatures on their petition and have launched three legal challenges. Wright has been making versions of this argument for all of it. ‘There are loads of people who’ve never even heard of us before, even though we’ve been going for five years,’ he said. ‘That’s why we have to do stunts like this.’
He has been using the park for 30 years. ‘I don’t want it ruined,’ he said.
Tents arrived in the park on Saturday afternoon, more than 24 hours before the permitted pitching time of 2pm on Sunday. A minor point. But in the context of five years of accumulated grievances, it lands differently than it once might have.
The court
A Court of Appeal challenge to the planning permission is still live. Papers were filed in April and a judge examined them in mid-June; a ruling could come at any point. If it succeeds, the planning permission falls. ‘We still haven’t heard about the Court of Appeal,’ said Christopher Coombe, another SWP director, this morning.
The leadership question
Sally Bolton, AELTC’s chief executive since 2020, will step down when this Championships ends. No reason has been given publicly. Her interim replacement will be financial director Richard Atkinson while a permanent successor is found. Bolton has led the club through the entire five-year Wimbledon Park dispute. AELTC is heading into its most consequential legal moment without the executive who managed the project from the start.
After breakfast
The Championships opened today. The queue stretched across the park. Save Wimbledon Park packed up their giant ears and went home for breakfast.
The All England Club did not send anyone.
Full coverage of the Wimbledon Park dispute is here. The man who designed Wimbledon has seen the proposed plans and had his own verdict.
Queens Club Fulham : The Club boasts 28 outdoor Lawn Tennis Courts, of which 12 are arguably the finest grass courts in the world, with six Shale Courts, six Plexi Courts, four Artificial Grass Courts and an Indoor Practice Wall.
https://roehampton.communitysport.aeltc.com/
Roehampton : 6 outdoor hard tennis courts and 18 grass tennis courts in 32 acres. How greed has taken over for the affluent. Will Wimbledon Common be on their list next ? It’s a travesty what is going on in this area and throughout the country. How dare this women have the power to block further discussion. All we need now is for Sadiq khan to chip in with is partner in property Asif Aziz.