The five tennis courts on Putney Lower Common will stay shut. The charity that owns them and the company lined up to run them withdrew their plan to resurface and reopen the courts on Monday, citing the strength of local feeling and the objections raised against it.
In a joint statement, the Wimbledon and Putney Commons Conservators (WPCC) and All Star Tennis said they had listened to the concerns put during the planning process and would “consider the options for the future before bringing forward any new proposal”. They gave no date and named no replacement.
The courts closed in September 2024, after years in which a charity running them on a shoestring let the surface crack and two of the five become unplayable. The Conservators had been looking for a long-term operator since early 2023. The arrangement with All Star Tennis, announced last summer, was the only plan anyone had put forward to pay for the repairs. The target was to have them open again by spring this year.
More people wanted that plan than didn’t. On Tuesday morning the council’s planning register held 135 comments in support, 93 objections and nine neutral, despite universal agreement that thre courts need to be repaired and made available again. What the objectors argued was never about the tarmac. The gardens of Erpingham Road and Egliston Mews back onto the courts, and they are opposed to what is a small community set of courts run by a charity being taken over by a commercial operator that is now for running intensive tennis training camps.
Those residents hired a Cambridge law firm to put their case to the council, alongside an acoustic report. Richard Buxton Solicitors also argued that a payment required to use a profit-making company’s facilities would be “an unlawful financial restriction”.
The private Act of Parliament that has governed the Commons since 1871 requires the Conservators to keep the land open for unrestricted exercise and recreation, and bars them from leasing any part of it. The objection went to whether the charity can charge for tennis here at all, not to the state of the surface.
The charity had already answered that argument once. In early August it said it was “taking specialist legal advice” and was “proceeding on the basis that the project is consistent with its statutory and fiduciary duties”. Monday’s statement does not mention legal advice.
Wandsworth Council was never going to be in a position to settle the argument. No change of use was sought, so the register lists the land as local community use before and after, and the application covered resurfacing, fencing and lighting. Whether a Victorian charity can lawfully charge people to play on its own common land is a question for the Charity Commission, the courts, or the Parliament the charity is already asking to rewrite the Act. Withdrawing the application leaves that question unanswered rather than resolved.
What happens now
Nothing, for the moment. The statement says the Conservators “will continue to explore options” for the courts, without saying what those are.
The chairman, Mauro Mattiuzzo, and the chief executive, Colin Cooper, are coming to Putney on 28 September for an open meeting of the Putney Society, at the Community Church on Werter Road, starting at 7.30pm. Anyone who wants an answer about the courts can ask for one there, although it it is worth noting that the vast majority of the WPCC’s work is about the maintenance and upkeep of the hundreds of acres of land around Putney it is entrusted to look after. The next election to the board that took this decision is in March 2027, and none of its five elected members currently lives in Putney.
The courts themselves have not changed in two years. Every net post has been pulled out and its hole cemented over, the tarmac is cracked, the pavilion is rotting and the fencing is ageing. Both sides of the argument told the council the place should be fixed. Nobody now has a plan to fix it.
It is pure NIMBYism. The residents immediately around the court are determined to stop any material development of the courts. The fact they have hired noise consultants illustrates the point and also why nothing gets built in this country. In the meantime local people who want to play tennis and do not have the privilege of belonging to a club have to travel much further.