Ilkley Tennis club follow Wimbledon's lead with ambitious plans for new centre court and padel courts

By no means as grand as those of the All England Club, the vision at Ilkley Lawn Tennis and Squash Club is still significant.

By primarily using profits from the annual tournament that makes up part of the grass-court season leading in to Wimbledon, and which grows in stature and income year on year, Ilkley want to build a new centre court and four to six padel courts in the next two years.

Discussions are at the early stage with no plans submitted to Bradford Council yet or the funding package determined.

But it all forms part of Ilkley’s plan for growth and none of the vision requires buying up any more land; it will all be done on-site with some relocating of existing courts.

Chris Harrison, Ilkley’s general manager, told The Yorkshire Post: “Off the back of last year’s tournament we had a few projects we were finishing up this summer, like the repurposing of a squash court into a two-story gym space, which is now active, and we’ve just had the indoor courts resurfaced as well. But we’re now looking at moving on in our master plan and embarking on the journey for four to six permanent, covered padel courts.

“It’s a big spend, it will approach seven figures, so it’s not something we can do overnight, but it’s the kind of thing we can do off the back of the success of the Ilkley Trophy.”

Padel is the fastest growing sport in Europe with the Lawn Tennis Association announcing last month a new strategy to invest in the visibility and infrastructure of the sport.

“Our challenge at Ilkley is two-fold,” continues Harrison. “Because of our green belt land and the fact we’re on an active floodplain and in an area of natural beauty, we’ve got all these hurdles to jump through.

“Then the other challenge is that because we are Ilkley Lawn Tennis Club we’re a leader in our field, we have to ensure that what we do, we do it really well. By taking the decision to do padel now, to do it properly and permanently, we will put in a scheme that will challenge anyone in the north of England.”

The planning application will be submitted within the next few months with the ambition to have the new courts ready for use by mid-2026.

Running concurrently is the plan to build a new centre court for the LTA’s Ilkley Trophy, a men’s and women’s tournament which runs every June.

The current centre court had temporary grandstands with 1,500 seats around it for this summer’s tournament, an increase on the year before. Harrison explains: “We’re in talks with the All England Club at Wimbledon for some advice on how we advance our tournament, and we’re looking at the rebuilding of a new centre court, the idea being we’ll use some of the field space to relocate a court over there which would allow us to have larger stands for the event.

“Part of our challenge now, because of where centre court is located in relation to the other courts, the clubhouse and the car park, is that we’re limited in our desire to increase the capacity.

“Whereas if we go over into the field and build a new purpose-built court, it could give us an infinite scale of what we could put on that court in terms of temporary stands. We’re attempting to future proof the growth of the tournament as year on year we see ticket sales increase.

“The whole project is a re-use of our space and our green areas, and again, would hopefully be ready by June 2026.”