The Court of Appeal has granted Save Wimbledon Park permission to appeal the ruling that the former Wimbledon Park golf course carries no statutory trust protecting it for public use.
In his order granting permission (case number CA-2026-000943), Lord Justice Newey wrote that the arguments advanced by Save Wimbledon Park have “sufficient substance for the appeal to have a real prospect of success.” The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) said that wording is standard whenever the Court of Appeal grants permission to appeal. The order sets a time estimate of three days for the hearing; Save Wimbledon Park says it expects the case to be heard in 2027.
It is the latest turn in a fight that has run since 2024, over 73 acres of Grade II*-listed Metropolitan Open Land that straddle Merton and a northern strip of Wandsworth. Wandsworth’s own planning committee voted 7-0 against AELTC’s scheme in 2023. Merton Council approved it; the GLA approved it and then the fight moved into the courts.
What the ruling means
The March ruling AELTC called “important clarity” found the golf course was never subject to a public recreation trust, clearing AELTC to build on land it bought from Merton Council in 1993. For the fuller legal reasoning, what that ruling decided is explained here.
That is different from the separate planning appeal, already listed for October, in which Save Wimbledon Park is challenging the planning permission itself. There is a third front too, over restrictive covenants put in place by Merton Council when it sold the land and AELTC accepts it would breach. Save Wimbledon Park calls the three together “triple jeopardy.” The cases are often confused but only the trust question returned to the courts this week.
It matters because AELTC has always accepted that if the statutory trust does exist, its plan to nearly triple the size of the grounds, with 38 new courts and an 8,000-seat stadium, cannot go ahead. National conservation groups, including CPRE and the Open Spaces Society, have been watching the case as a test of how far such protections can be unwound elsewhere.
A spokesperson for AELTC said the decision was disappointing and “will inevitably lead to further delays.” The club said it remains confident the March ruling, which it says found in its favour “by a wide margin,” will survive the appeal. It points to what it says the scheme would deliver in return: 27 acres of new public parkland on land that is currently private, alongside bringing the Qualifying Competition onto the main site so Wimbledon can host it the way other Grand Slams do.
Residents who want to follow the campaign can sign Save Wimbledon Park’s petition, which has raised more than £160,000 through crowdfunding since 2025, or contact Wimbledon MP Paul Kohler, an established critic of AELTC’s handling of the dispute.
The case behind the appeal
The whole case turns on a single procedural question: when Merton Council sold the golf course freehold to AELTC in 1993, it did not carry out the statutory advertisement and consultation the law required. The March ruling also addressed how that 1993 purchase related to AELTC’s earlier 1986 lease of the same land, finding that “the 1986 lease and the 1993 transfer of the freehold were each made free of such trust.”
Save Wimbledon Park says the underlying procedural omission means the land’s protection was never lawfully removed in the first place. AELTC’s on-record response is that the point is academic either way: even if a trust had existed, the club says it would have taken the land free of it when it bought the freehold in 1993. Both sides’ arguments over that lease-to-freehold relationship will now get a full hearing at the Court of Appeal.
Jeremy Hudson of Save Wimbledon Park repeated the campaign’s offer to meet AELTC, first made on the opening day of this year’s Championships. “We do so again,” he said. “As we have constantly said, a long drawn-out legal process isn’t necessary and is in their power to resolve.”
AELTC rejected the campaign’s own compromise plan four weeks ago, calling it one that “simply doesn’t work.” Until this week, the club had appeared to be closing every other door on the dispute.
In April, Lord Banner, sponsoring a new law letting ministers strip such trusts retrospectively, told the House of Lords the power was in fact academic for Wimbledon Park specifically, because AELTC had already won the trust point outright. This decision puts that assumption back in play.
AELTC’s spokesperson repeated that “the vast majority of local people” want the club to press ahead with its plans. Susan Cusack of Save Wimbledon Park disputes that. “That’s not what 22,631 people say on our petition,” she said. “If they’d kept their promises from 1993, we wouldn’t be here at all.”
The Court of Appeal has not yet listed a hearing date; until then, Save Wimbledon Park says it remains ready to meet AELTC.
The case does not turn on the procedural question you describe. It turns on whether the statutory trust ever existed in the first place. The judge found it did not. You are still trying to apply Day v. Shropshire which is irrelevant to this case. Read the judgment more carefully.