Wimbledon expansion: MPs urge Londoners to reject £200m plans
The two MPs involved in Wimbledon’s controversial expansion plans, Stephen Hammond and Fleur Anderson, have claimed that the proposed development “totally disrespects the protected status of the land”.
Hammond is the Conservative MP for Wimbledon, and Anderson the Labour representative for Putney, but the suggested changes to what used to be Wimbledon Park Golf Course would cut across both their territories.
At the end of last year, the plans were passed by Merton Council but rejected by Wandsworth (again, there is a split between the two boroughs). They are presently under consideration by the Greater London Authority, although London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has recused himself from the debate after previously expressing his support.
Jules Pipe, the deputy mayor for planning, is thus the man in the hot seat, although it seems likely that the decision will eventually be referred upwards again, probably to Michael Gove, secretary of state for housing.
Hammond and Anderson have been united in their criticism of the putative development – which involve 38 new grass courts and an 8,000-seater stadium – since publishing a joint statement of opposition in 2022.
Their latest contribution comes via an op-ed article in the Evening Standard, which is itself a riposte to a similar comment piece written last month by the AELTC’s new chair Debbie Jevans.
Jevans’s main argument, as she also told Telegraph Sport in a recent interview, is that the new incarnation of the land would feature a 23-acre public park, whereas the old golf club, which has been inactive since the end of 2021, was only available to members.
Yet Anderson and Hammond challenged the substance of this point. “They [the AELTC] talk about a new public park on land that was closed for over 100 years,” the article says. “The previous golf club was municipal and any resident of Merton could play on it at a hugely discounted rate.
As they continued, “The ‘park’, which is not actually 23 acres as AELTC claim but 17 acres, won’t be a traditional park as such – football-kicking, frisbee throwing – nor will it be truly public. It will be ‘permissive’. as Wimbledon can close it any time they want. There are already plans to close most of it for May and June every year, and it could be closed for longer or even developed on in the future.”
Jevans’s article argued that the work would create benefits for Londoners, including more than 250 jobs, and said that Wimbledon could “fall behind as the crowning event in world tennis” if it is not allowed to expand.
But the MPs stress that Merton Council’s decision to sell the land to the AELTC for just £5.2 million in 1993 (on a pending lease that eventually had to be bought out via an additional £65 million payment to golf-club members) had been made on the basis that the land would never be built on.
“Who knows what they [the AELTC] may want in 10 or 20 years’ time,” the op-ed suggests. “Another stadium, a hotel, a heliport?”
