Park tennis bookings double after £30m refurbishment of 3,100 public courts

Bookings on Britain’s public park tennis courts have more than doubled since a £30m refurbishment programme resurfaced and installed gate-access systems at 3,100 courts across the country, according to figures published by the Lawn Tennis Association on Monday.

The programme, funded jointly by the LTA and the government and delivered through local councils, has seen 3.4m court bookings made in the past 12 months, compared with 1.5m in the year before the work began in 2022. The LTA says 410,000 people have booked a court for the first time, and that 58% of them live in the most deprived half of local authority areas.

“Park courts were the forgotten corner of this sport for 30 years,” said the LTA’s chief executive, Helen Marsh. “Cracked surfaces, no nets, a padlock somebody lost the key to in 2009. What we have now is a network of courts that people can find, book and play on for free or for a couple of pounds, and the numbers tell you that was all that was ever missing.”

Of the refurbished courts, 61% are free to use and the remainder charge between £2 and £6 an hour, with the fees going to the council for maintenance. The LTA’s own research found that the average booked session was 74 minutes and that 44% of bookers were women, up from 31% before the programme.

The scheme has not been universally popular. Several councils have reported complaints from residents that gate locks, which open only with a booking code, have stopped children and informal players from using courts that had previously been open. A group in Sheffield has collected 2,300 signatures on a petition calling for one court in each park to be left unlocked.

“My kids used to go down with a couple of rackets after school and knock a ball about,” said Rachel Oyelowo, 41, who started the petition. “Now you need an app and a time slot and a code, and if the court is booked by someone who does not turn up, which happens all the time, you stand there looking at an empty court through a fence. That is not what a park is for.”

The LTA said it had asked councils to review “no-show” rates, which it put at 11% nationally, and that it was trialling a system in Leeds and Cardiff in which unbooked courts unlock automatically after 15 minutes. Marsh said the gate system was “the price of the investment”, since councils had been unwilling to maintain courts that could not be managed. “An open court with no net is free for everybody and used by nobody,” she said.

The programme is due to complete its final 400 courts by next summer. A second phase, covering indoor facilities and floodlighting, is awaiting a funding decision from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.