Project Smash is an initiative to both develop the facilities at Bramford Tennis Club and at the same time, in line with the LTA strategy to  "open tennis up" to establish Sport Development programmes which make tennis more accessible to the wider community including those from disadvantaged areas and underepresented groups.

Much of the hard work associated with the project has been going on behind the scenes over the last 18 months as a small team of dedicated individuals have worked tirelessly on behalf of the club on business case production, grant funding applications, planning applications and supplier selection exercises.

Despite a number of early setbacks, the team didn't give up and through a lot of extra research, rewriting of business cases, redrafting of funding applications and just sheer persistence, the hard work finally started to pay off and working with partners including Mid Suffolk District Council, Sport England, Bramford Parish Council and a range of other smaller partners, the team managed to raise over £70,000 towards Phase 1 of the project.

Of course, all grant funding comes with conditions and hence we had to be very clear on how the work we were proposing would benefit not only existing members but also the wider community. In our Phase 1 priorities we were able to demonstrate how an innovative floodlighting solution for Court 1 could be achieved that would meet the stringent planning and envionmental requirements, could increase of court capacity over the winter by 33% and how some of this extra capacity could be used to support a series of Sport Development programmes that would attract people who previously hadn't considered tennis to be an option for them.

In technical terms the solution chosen that could meet all the planning requirements is provided through a company called Carbon8 and is based on 8 x Althima LED heads mounted to a series of retractable poles. The poles can be left at unobtrusive fence height for general play or raised to 4.25m for more serious matchplay.

Installation work for the floodlight solution is mostly complete and we are now entering the commissioning stage. We were able to switch the lights on for the first time tonight and over the next few weeks we will be doing some further testing and configuration adjustments with our supplier (Carbon8).

Please be patient during the testing and commissioning phase and await further instructions before attempting to use Court 1 floodlights. 

There's even more good news to come, as over the next few months, the club will also have a brand new purpose built CLUBHUT/SECURE STORE to replace the current small shed. The CLUBHUT is currently under construction with a company called Portable Space who are based in Stowmarket.

More details on Project Smash can be found using the link below

https://clubspark.lta.org.uk/BramfordTennisClub/COMMITTEE/GRANTS

Finally, if anyone has skills in business planning, writing grant applications, project management, financial planning etc and wants to get involved in Project Smash Phase 2 please feel free to get in touch via the club email bramfordtennisclub@yahoo.com