“Courting Environmental Disaster”
All England Lawn tennis Club’s (AELTC) proposed development in Wimbledon onto Heritage Parkland will have a hugely negative environmental impact. The 73 acre site was acquired in 1993 and is Metropolitan Open Land (MOL - the equivalent of Green Belt in the countryside). It is Grade II* Heritage Landscape and Grade 1 Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) in Merton. It is in the North Wimbledon Conservation Area and, together with the legal Covenants placed upon it, which include that it can never be built on, it has the highest protection against development.
AELTC, who agreed to the Covenants and their restrictions, are now proposing to bulldoze almost all of the entire site to a depth of between 1 and 9 metres, felling 300 trees and uprooting 500 others, releasing over 800,000 Kg of captured carbon.
The ‘harm’ to this Urban Green Belt is Substantial. There are 2000 trees across 54 species but only 50% of the trees have been documented by the AELTC. Not only is this an extraordinary and unprofessional failure to adhere to the British Standard, it allows the AELTC to trumpet a bio diversity net gain which is entirely incorrect. In the independent report by JAM which Merton commissioned, some of these egregious errors were highlighted - “the ES (Environmental Statement) chapter consistently refers to the incorrect figures for net gain”.
The AELTC are promising to plant 1500 trees and shrubs - these will subsequently be thinned out - and most of the trees are whips. Anything larger (max 10m high with a tiny canopy) will be transplanted from another site so is not a gain. The tree canopy will be decimated for 50 years, even if the newly planted trees survive, as new trees take decades to grow. Trees are an anathema to tennis, they cast unwanted shadows and will shed leaves, both of which are very distracting to tennis players. In addition, each tennis court required a concrete ring beam (105 tonnes of concrete for each of the proposed 38 courts) and, as some mature trees are shown right beside courts on the planning application, it is hard to imagine how their roots will cope and survive. The existing Urban Greening Factor (a planning tool designed to improve the provision of Green Infrastructure [GI], particularly in urban areas) in Wimbledon Park is 0.99 and in expert analysis it has been scientifically calculated that this will be reduced by 30% to 0.70 if the AELTC plans go ahead. This London Plan initiative is designed to improve and accelerate greening; the AELTC proposed development will do precisely the opposite.
All this excavation and felling of trees would lead to a loss of valuable ecosystems and national priority habitats supporting invertebrates, birds and bats. There would be destruction of the ‘soil food web’ endangering root systems and fungal networks, harming the remaining above ground trees and plants. Light pollution would compromise bats and other species.
The centrepiece of Capability Brown’s 18th Century design is the 29 acre lake which the AELTC propose to desilt. The method proposed would severely pollute it, threatening the European Eel and all other species that depend on the lake for food and shelter, eg the Swift, Little Egret, Kingfisher, Pochard and eight species of Bat. On this point the JAM report states, “It is not clear how the de-silting of the lake will address potential impacts on the ecology”. It will also generate toxic waste. The National Planning Framework requires pollution reduction. AELTC’s management of the intensive tennis development requires extensive use of fertilisers and biocides, which will leach into the lake, essentially untreated. These pollutants will prevent any improvement of lake water quality. The Wimbledon Park Lake is the largest body of water south of the Thames in this quarter of London.
As Lord Coe said in an interview in the Guardian in July 2023 “Air Pollution could kill London as a Sporting Capital”. Roads in Wimbledon and Southfields currently breach World Health Organisation guidelines for both NO2 and PM2.5 (non exhaust emissions NEE). The AELTC’s proposed development requires over 40,400 lorries over an 8 year period, increasing NO2 and PM2.5 pollution. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, on 20 Feb 2024 stated “I want every single child to breathe clean air in and around their school”. DEFRA has said there is “no safe threshold [for PM2.5] below which no adverse effects would be anticipated”.
Heavily laden lorries cause more degradation both to their tyres and the road surface and therefore produce more particulates. The London Mayor’s Policy S1 states “development plans…should seek…to deliver further improvements to air quality and should not reduce air quality benefits that result from the Mayor’s (expansion of ULEZ) or borough’s activities to improve air quality. Data used in the AELTC’s Air Quality Assessment (July 2021) and revision (May 2022) is limited and out of date. WHO guidelines for safe levels of particulate matter were revised significantly downwards (Sept 2021). Emissions from up to 50 additional construction vehicles per day on crowded, narrow residential streets will cause considerable health damage and exacerbate respiratory issues for the local community and particularly for the children attending the 33 schools and nurseries in the area. The JAM report again clearly points to AELTC’s and Merton’s lack of analysis when it says “the vehicle trip analysis is completely inconsistent between documents and uses different methods of analysis….The impact of the increase in traffic upon climate change has not been provided.’
Over three years we have had four rounds of over 200 planning documents, some of which are 600 pages long. It is unclear what the AELTC are actually proposing. As early as Autumn 2022 Merton’s JAM report stated ‘there are considerable inconsistencies between documents and as a result consequential errors occurred in other related reports’.
The AELTC promote a Biodiversity Net Gain of 10%. Given the destruction of the site, felling of hundreds of trees and annihilation of animal, insect and plant habitats, how can this be plausible?
In conclusion, protecting the environment for future generations is far more important than the proposed destruction of highly protected MOL for a 4 day qualifying tournament on behalf of a private tennis cub with fewer than 500 members.
