MyLondon | 17 August 2024 | Harrison Galliven Local Democracy Reporter
“We’re not anti-tennis.” To anyone who has interacted with the Save Wimbledon Park (SWP) campaign, this will not be the first time you have heard this mantra.
The line is often used to preface the group’s many concerns about the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s (AELTC) plans to build an 8,000-seater stadium for Wimbledon Tennis on the grounds of an old golf club opposite the current championships site.
SWP have a multi-faceted argument against the plans, which take in concerns about the environment, access and the decision to build on metropolitan open land, despite both Merton Council and AELTC’s prior agreement that they wouldn’t do that. However, there is another less technical but nonetheless impactful issue that binds them in their opposition.
The disruption caused by what AELTC predicts as at least eight years of building works and associated traffic always comes up as an issue, given the immense size of what they have planned for the area. Along with building an 8,000-seat show court, 38 grass courts and 10 maintenance hubs on the site, the plans include a new public park spanning 9.4 hectares.
The extra courts would allow AELTC to move the qualifying competition for the championships in Roehampton to the expanded site. It would also host a new 14-and-under tournament and double the size of the wheelchair tennis tournament.
AELTC has argued the scheme would safeguard the future of the championships in Wimbledon and make sure it "remains as the pre-eminent tennis tournament in the world and one of the most recognisable global sporting events".
However, residents are less jolly about AELTC’s vision. They have told MyLondon how the image of idyllic new grounds pales in comparison to what will be a daily grind of construction traffic and pollution.
Wimbledon resident Susan Cusack has helped lead SWP in their opposition to the plans. She explained how the scale of such a project would make locals suffer for perhaps the next decade.
She said: “The lorries will be required to remove every single inch of soil from the 73-acre site, we’re talking an enormous amount of disruption there. Think about how many lorries are going to be needed to manage that.”
The SWP estimates that 44,400 more lorries would be needed to complete such a task. This would amount to up to 54 vehicles per day and one every 10 minutes from 8am to 5pm.
AELTC and the local authorities have already assigned a designated route that these lorries would take. However, SWP believes this route passes too close to areas of high concentration, and more often than not is along old and narrow roads.
Susan added: “It’s especially bad around the village end of Church Road, where there is a row of listed little cottages that are really, really old and they literally shake when all these big lorries come past.”
This is not just a concern of residents from the admittedly posher end of the park in Wimbledon Village. Southfield residents have also expressed concerns about the increase in traffic on their roads.