Castor and Ailsworth Tennis Club

Castor & Ailsworth Project Update, JANUARY 2026

Background and History

We are a village club, with an 80+ year history, initially providing tennis facilities for the communities of Castor & Ailsworth and the surrounding villages. Over the last 5 years our club has also developed pickleball.

Structure

-   We are a community amateur sports club

-   We are a member’s club

-   Run by a committee

-   Overseen by trustees who hold the assets of the club and have the final say on the running of the club, changes and future plans.

-   A project team was set up 7 years ago to manage and drive the project to move the club to new courts at Woodlands in Castor.

-   At the AGM 12/08/2020 the members set the project team the task of developing the new tennis courts in the village with authority to make key decisions.

Why Move?

• The club has been at Holme Close for 50+ years and our facilities are outdated in comparison with other local clubs.
• Our 2 grass courts are expensive to maintain and have a short playing season.
• The grass courts are weather dependant.
• The club has to hire courts for all our tennis matches as our courts are unsuitable for the leagues.
• The grass court, baseline run offs are too short.
• Parking is a problem and has resulted in complaints from our neighbours on Holme Close.
• The club is surrounded by houses and therefore floodlighting will not be possible.
• Tennis members have joined other clubs so that they can play all year round, resulting in loss of members.

The Project

Almost 10 years ago, the committee, with the backing of the members, embarked on bringing the club’s facilities into the 21stcentury by moving to a more suitable site. At this point the club was tennis only. After much research the decision was made to move to Woodlands in Castor and lease space from Nene Park Trust (NPT) and build 5 new tennis courts.

The club was to apply for planning permission for 2 houses at Holme Close, sell the site, releasing sufficient money to build our new courts.

By 2020 pickleball and padel were evolving and so our planning was updated to include 2 courts of each. Pickleball commenced at our club in 2020 when 2 courts were taped onto the hardcourt for sessions to run.

The Obstacles/challenges!

• There was a covenant on the Holme Close site with the church commissioners, lasting 25 years. If we sold the site prior to April 2024 we had to share the proceeds with the commissioners.
• We need to be able to add ‘mains drainage’ to Holme Close (to be able to sell the site) so we entered into a legal agreement with one of our neighbours to put drains, at the edge of their property, running through to Holme Close.
• Planning – problems with highways department due to the width of our driveway and the exit to Holme Close.
• Planning – a condition to our planning permission that we must ‘provide a minimum of 3 tennis courts’ at the new site.
• A foul drain at Woodlands, crossing our proposed site, took over a year to resolve with Anglian Water.
• We were always a ‘low priority’ with NPT, who continually stalled the project.
• NPT took a year and a half to gain planning permission for a sports pavilion at Woodlands to provide changing facilities and showers for football, cricket and tennis (October 2025).
• NPT decided to take away part of our proposed tennis club site to provide a multi-use games area adjacent to our courts.
• A result of an ecological survey was that we would be creating negative biodiversity by building our new courts and would have to pay DEFRA £180,000!

The Switch

Due to all of the above and more, we built a relationship with Country Court Care (CCC) who also have land at Woodlands, which includes 4 old and derelict tennis courts.

They agreed to lease a parcel of land, slightly larger than the 4 existing courts, to build tennis, pickleball and possibly padel courts.

This will result in a much cheaper solution for the club with no negative biodiversity but with a smaller footprint than with NPT.

They agreed to a 99-year lease (NPT was only 50 years) and we have received a draft agreement to sub-let and our lawyers are exploring this now. We will then submit a planning application for our courts along with planning for a children’s nursery for CCC.

What will this give us?

• A parcel of land which was the old 4 tennis courts.
• An additional space which could be used for a padel court.
• Space for a clubhouse
• Floodlighting for all courts
• Adequate parking

A suggested plan has been drawn up by CCC’s architects to give an example of how the space could be used. It’s up to the club to decide.

Suggested Court Layout

• 3 tennis courts (as per our planning condition)
• 4 pickleball courts
• 1 padel court *

Please remember, we are a village club and our decisions will be closely monitored by both parish councils and Peterborough City Council planners, therefore our planning permission and our future facilities must fit into the village community. As access to the potential new courts is via Splash Lane, there may be constraints on the number of car journeys to the club and consequently the number of courts we are building.

Our last club update (number 13) was produced in June 2024. Very little has happened since then until recently with the development of the draft agreement to sub-let with CCC.

It is important that members have their say in the club’s future and we are therefore going to produce a survey for you all to complete. This will feed important information to the committee, project team and the trustees. We will all help shape the future of our club.

Richard

(on behalf of the committee)

*As padel courts are very expensive and several courts are already being built in the local area, it is possible we will use this for something else, e.g. additional pickleball court/s.