Grass courts at Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club

The Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club is a

lawn tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cove ...

club in

Thames Ditton Thames Ditton is a suburban village on the River Thames, in the Elmbridge borough of Surrey, England. Apart from a large inhabited island in the river, it lies on the southern bank, centred 12.2 miles (19.6 km) southwest of Charing Cross ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and non-metropolitan county, non-metropolitan counties of England, county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant ur ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It was established in 1882, nine years after the official rules of

were laid down. It is the oldest lawn tennis club still on its original site. Long after most clubs have replaced grass with various types of all-weather surface, Thames Ditton retains six outstanding grass courts and four newly installed artificial clay courts.

Legal history

In the late 1990s, as the lease of the land on which the Club plays came to an end, the survival of the TDLTC came under threat. The owner of the freehold wanted to sell the site to a residential developer. A question was raised in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

about the vulnerability of sports clubs to greedy developers
Hansard
The case entered the legal textbooks a

Briefly: In Coppin-Smith, the premises comprised Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club, which included ten tennis courts and a pavilion, together covering over . The tenants, the trustees of the club, served a ''s26'' request on the landlord, who served a counter-notice stating that he would resist a new lease on ground. Before the hearing, the landlord applied for

planning permission Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building per ...

for the site, which was refused on the ground of the loss of a recreational open space. The landlord then decided to demolish the buildings and courts on the basis that this would make it easier in the future to obtain planning consent. At the hearing, the Court of Appeal had to consider whether the landlord had established a 'reasonable prospect' of success (using the test in ''Cadogan''). The landlord's expert gave evidence that the proposed demolition could be carried out without planning permission. The Court of Appeal considered whether this was correct in the light of the 1995 direction that planning consent for demolition is required only for dwelling houses. It decided that, contrary to the landlord's expert's view, planning permission would be required as the works were more aptly described as engineering works than demolition works. It was agreed that the landlord would encounter the same objection as previously when applying for planning permission. Accordingly, it held that the landlord could not show the necessary firm and settled intention to demolish the premises and was unable to resist the tenant's application for a new lease.

The club today

* Olly Johnson (Chairman) * Luke Steel (Bar Secretary) * Richard Simkins (Secretary)

Location

Weston Green Road,

References

External links

Thames Ditton Lawn Tennis Club

Government consultation paper on issues arising from the Thames Ditton case

{{Elmbridge Sports clubs and teams established in 1882 Tennis venues in England Sport in Surrey Borough of Elmbridge 1882 establishments in England Tennis clubs