Save Wimbledon Park Campaign Continues
Save Wimbledon Park Campaign Continues
Susan Cusack, SW19 resident and one of the spokespersons for Save Wimbledon Park (SWP) on why she and the SWP campaign team will see this match out to a full five setter!
No one knows more about this ongoing issue of the planned AELTC expansion of the Championships than Susan Cusack. Susan moved to Wimbledon from Barnes with her young family in Spring 2003, drawn by the close-knit community, the Village atmosphere, shops and restaurants.
“I was invited to join the Belvedere Estate Residents Assocation (BERA) by the late Roger Chadder, who also got me involved in the tennis charity car parking at St. Mary’s Church, both about 20 years ago. I joined the BERA Committee in 2010, taking responsibility for planning matters a few years later and becoming the Chair about 8 years ago. Little did I know how much time I would soon be committing to the role with more and more planning applications, especially the AELTC one since April 2021.”
Since then Susan has been an active member of the campaign to challenge the expansion of the Wimbledon grounds, but when did she know the scale of what she was dealing with? “In Spring 2021 there were three Zoom briefings by the AELTC about the application but it was only at the second briefing that all the RA’s and societies attending were made aware of the size and scope of the largest application that Merton has ever dealt with.”
When the application was first registered in July 2021 there were 120 documents and two further tranches have since been put in by the AELTC bringing the total number to over 200, some of which are over 600 pages long. It was then that SWP set up a petition against the application which now has over 20,000 signatures.
Whilst SWP aren’t active during the Championships, on 22 June, Susan joined a large gathering at Southfields. “A small group of us then headed off to the Restore Nature Now march from Hyde Park to Westminster. I’ve never been on a march before and there was an incredible atmosphere with 100,000 people, including many young children, walking peacefully along closed roads in the centre of London. Speeches about the environment were made by Emma Thompson and Chris Packham, amongst others. “
What motivates and drives her energy to save the environment and our natural surroundings? “The message is so clear, but people aren’t listening. We are sleep walking to disaster, people do not understand the devastation. This is Metropolitan Open Land/Green Belt. We’ve two daughters and my first grandchild on the way, and we have a responsibility to take care of the world for future generations.”
“ The thing is we never disrupt the tennis, I love tennis and we are not standing in the way, we are just not comfortable about the environmental impact this will have on the area. People don’t realise the space the queue to the tennis takes up, it takes so much of the public park, and there is parking all over what was the golf club. So the public park is taken away and there is no room for locals.
“There are a lot of people in Southfields that don’t have a garden and the public park is their only option of green space…. And if you make the queue bigger then you take away their access to local parks.”
Read the AELTC response.
It’s clear that Susan is passionate and informed about her plight to Save Wimbledon Park and her analogies of the impact the stadium would make are stark. “This is already like a Premier League football match being played every day for 15 days in a row, on a site between two villages, and dependent on the District Line which is unreliable and ill-equipped to deal with the number of people. “
One of the main arguments for the expansion is that people can enjoy watching the tennis on the practise courts, but Susan contests that people can watch practising in Raynes Park and qualifying in Roehampton, a wonderful site which already has concrete surrounded engineered grass tennis courts in situ. “There is a also a real opportunity to spread the AELTC money and magic into other parts of the UK, which would benefit other areas with the tourism and attraction of the tennis.”
Her other concern is the precedent that allowing the plans to go through would set. “There are over 50 parks across London which are under threat of development by private, elite, commercial sporting clubs. If the AELTC gets the go ahead, even with the Covenants on the land, it will set a dangerous example.”
The decision about the proposals now lies with the GLA, and there will be a 21-day notice before the GLA decision is heard.
Wandsworth council have voted against the proposals in a meeting held on Tuesday 21 November 2023. But Merton Council’s planning committee has given permission for the 39 new courts to be built on the site of the former Wimbledon Park Golf Club.
The AELTC insists that the proposed expansions will ‘maintain the championships at the pinnacle of sport, by bringing qualifying to SW19, and will provide year-round substantial public benefit to those who live locally to the Grounds.”
It won’t be long until Susan and all of SWP and the whole community will find out how it’s going to play out.
Read the response from the AELTC
