Wimbledon Park appeal reaches Court of Appeal over expansion

The Wimbledon Park appeal reaches the Court of Appeal on 7th October 2026, putting a major planning dispute over the expansion of the Wimbledon Championships back before the courts. The hearing is listed for two days, running through to 8th October.

Save Wimbledon Park Ltd is appealing against Mr Justice Saini’s July 2025 decision dismissing its judicial review of the Mayor of London’s grant of planning permission for development on Wimbledon Park Golf Course. The Court of Appeal’s own listing says the challenge concerns whether the Mayor properly considered legal constraints affecting the land, including an asserted statutory trust for public recreation and restrictive covenants against built development.

The case matters well beyond tennis. It raises a difficult planning-law question about how decision-makers should treat obstacles that may prevent an otherwise acceptable development from being delivered, particularly where the land is protected as Metropolitan Open Land and the planning balance relies on claimed benefits from the scheme.

What the Wimbledon Park appeal is about

The proposed development covers 39.7 hectares of former golf-course land between Wimbledon Park and the All England Lawn Tennis Club’s existing grounds. The High Court judgment records a scheme for 38 new grass tennis courts, tennis infrastructure and buildings including an 8,000-seat stadium, together with extensive works to Wimbledon Park Lake.

The land is designated Metropolitan Open Land, or MOL. In London planning policy, MOL receives the same policy protection as Green Belt. The site also has other constraints, including a Grade II* registered park and garden, nature-conservation designations, protected trees and a conservation-area designation. The High Court recorded an earlier Wandsworth officer’s description of the site as subject to “some of the most restrictive planning constraints possible”.

The planning application crossed the boundary between Merton and Wandsworth. Merton resolved to approve it, while Wandsworth refused. The applications were then called in by the Mayor of London, and the Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Fire Safety granted planning permission on 18th November 2024.

The current court hearing does not amount to a fresh planning application or a re-run of the planning balance. The Court of Appeal is considering the legality of the High Court decision that upheld the Mayor’s approach.

Why the statutory trust and covenants matter

The legal constraints sit at the centre of the dispute. The Mayor’s decision proceeded on the assumption that the golf-course land was subject to a statutory trust requiring it to be kept available for public recreational use. It was also common ground before the High Court that restrictive covenants required the land to remain open and free of built development.

Those restrictions are not the same thing as planning policy. A planning permission does not, by itself, override a private covenant or resolve every separate legal constraint affecting land. Planning Geek’s guide to restrictive covenants and planning permission explains that distinction in more general terms.

Save Wimbledon Park’s first ground in the High Court argued that the Mayor had unlawfully failed to treat the effect of the trust and covenants on deliverability as a material consideration. Its case was that the scheme’s benefits were being relied upon to justify development on protected open land, yet those benefits might not be capable of delivery while the legal constraints remained.

Saini J rejected that argument. He held that there is no universal rule requiring deliverability to be treated as a material consideration in every case. On the facts before him, he found that the Mayor’s approach to the trust and restrictive covenants was a “planning judgment rationally exercised”.

Deliverability is the key planning-law issue

The High Court’s reasoning is important because it separates the existence of an obstacle from the planning merits of the development. The judgment accepted that deliverability can be material, but said it is not automatically relevant simply because an obstacle appears difficult or even potentially insurmountable.

The officers advising the Mayor had concluded that the benefits of the Wimbledon scheme were not time-sensitive and that there were no other potentially suitable and available sites which were less constrained. Saini J held that it was lawful, in those circumstances, for the Mayor to determine whether the proposal was acceptable in land-use terms on the assumption that it could eventually come forward.

That is now one of the important issues sitting behind the Wimbledon Park appeal. The Court of Appeal will not be deciding whether every planning decision can ignore delivery problems. It will be considering whether the High Court was right about the legal boundaries of the Mayor’s planning judgment in this particular case.

For practitioners, the distinction is worth watching. There is a large difference between saying a constraint exists, showing that it affects the planning merits, and establishing that a decision-maker is legally required to give it weight. The appeal may provide further appellate guidance on where that line should be drawn.

Metropolitan Open Land is central to the planning balance

The development site is not Green Belt, but Metropolitan Open Land has equivalent policy protection in London. That makes the planning balance especially significant because inappropriate development requires very special circumstances capable of clearly outweighing the harm.

The High Court judgment records that the Mayor relied on a package of benefits, including the sporting facilities, improvements to public open space and the wider operation of the Wimbledon Championships. The permission was also controlled through planning conditions and a section 106 agreement.

Save Wimbledon Park argued that the ability to deliver those benefits could not sensibly be separated from the legal restrictions affecting the land. The Mayor and the club successfully argued in the High Court that the planning merits could still be assessed without resolving those separate legal obstacles first.

The Court of Appeal hearing therefore sits at the intersection of planning policy and land law. The outcome could be useful whenever a development proposal is said to deliver substantial planning benefits but implementation depends on removing or overcoming a separate legal restriction.

The other High Court grounds

The 2025 judicial review was not limited to deliverability. Save Wimbledon Park also challenged the Mayor’s treatment of heritage policy and sports and recreation policy.

On heritage, the campaign group argued that the decision-maker had failed properly to address whether earlier management choices amounted to deliberate neglect or damage to the Grade II* registered park and garden. Saini J rejected that ground.

The third ground concerned the then National Planning Policy Framework paragraph 103 and the treatment of open space and sports provision. The High Court concluded that the proposed tennis courts and new public park could rationally fall within the policy’s sports and recreation provisions. The judgment records 11.1 hectares of new public park as part of the scheme.

Those points provide context for today’s appeal, but the Court of Appeal’s official listing puts particular emphasis on the statutory trust and restrictive covenants. Until judgment is handed down, it would be wrong to present any of the High Court findings as having been overturned.

Why the Wimbledon Park appeal matters in practice

There are three practical reasons to follow the case closely.

First, it may clarify how far a planning authority can separate planning merits from real-world legal deliverability. That question arises in many forms, including restrictive covenants, statutory trusts, land ownership problems and third-party rights.

Second, it concerns a highly protected site where the decision depended on balancing substantial policy harm against claimed benefits. Any Court of Appeal guidance on the role of deliverability in that balance could be relevant well beyond major sports developments.

Third, it is a reminder that obtaining planning permission is not always the end of the development story. Planning permission, private rights, statutory trusts and other land constraints operate in different legal spheres. A permission can be valid while another legal mechanism still prevents implementation.

That distinction is also why a challenge to a planning permission needs to be framed carefully. Planning judicial review is about the lawfulness of the public decision, not whether the court would have made a different planning judgment. Planning Geek’s guide to judicial review and High Court planning challenges explains the basic route and the importance of acting quickly.

What happens next

The Court of Appeal has listed Save Wimbledon Park Ltd v The Mayor of London for 7th and 8th October 2026. The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary hearing page provides the current listing and links to the live stream and the parties’ skeleton arguments.

The lower-court decision remains R (Save Wimbledon Park Ltd) v Mayor of London [2025] EWHC 1856 (Admin). That judgment dismissed the judicial review and remains the operative court decision unless and until the Court of Appeal rules otherwise.

No Court of Appeal judgment had been handed down when this report was prepared. Planning Geek will treat the eventual judgment as a fresh legal development rather than guessing the outcome from the hearing.