Plans to create a new base for a community football club along with a padel centre in New Eltham have been approved by Greenwich councillors – but the expansion of the facilities angered neighbours.
GB10 Sports plans to build two 11-a-side artificial football pitches, five grass pitches, a children’s play area and new clubhouse at the old Co-op sports ground on Footscray Road, close to the Charlton Athletic training facilities at Sparrows Lane.
Six padel courts would also be included to help fund the facility, which would be open to the community and be a home for the newly-formed AFC Greenwich Borough side, which took over Welling United’s academy earlier this year.
The padel centre would be close to homes in Inca Drive, a cul-de-sac next to the ground, and residents complained that their homes would be disturbed by the noise from that as well as the floodlights from the pitches.
“The location of this project is simply too close to residential properties, including mine, and it will have a seriously negative impact on our daily lives,” one neighbour, Paul Baynes, said. “The noise levels from the constant use of the courts and pitches, particularly in the evenings and weekends, will be above substantial. Padel tennis with its hard surfaces and enclosed walls is known for generating sharp, repetitive sound that travels easily.
“Combine this with the high energy of football matches. It’s disruptive, with mass cheering, chanting and swearing. Not an ideal environment when the small and impressionable children who live and visit here are playing in the communal gardens.”
Baynes said that the development would “change the character of the area entirely from a quiet residential space into part of a sports complex”.
Joanne McGetrick, another resident, said noise from the Charlton training ground 200 metres away could be heard in her flat, even to the point that she knows which players were playing. She complained that she and her neighbours had been treated as “an afterthought”.
“This new proposal will bring intensively-used flood lit pitches three times closer, just 60 meters from our bedrooms and our living rooms operating seven days a week early until late for households like mine with two night shift workers who rely on daytime rest for their safety critical jobs.”
But AFC Greenwich Borough’s director of football, Tony Russell, said the club’s teams were currently scattered throughout southeast London. He said: “Imagine the impact of bringing everyone under one roof, building community spirit and giving our kids a place to call home.”
Russell also said the sports ground had not seen real investment in decades, and the football club wanted to “restore this site into one of the best sports facilities for the next generation”.
Another neighbour, Dena Webb, said her father had been general manager of the ground when it was owned by the Co-op. “I do not want housing or a Tesco there,” she said. The sports ground “isn’t an issue for me, I miss the sounds of football behind my house,” she said.
Joel Hiagbe, a 14-year-old Greenwich Borough player from Woolwich, also spoke in support of the plans. He said joining the academy had reignited his love for football after playing for Charlton from the age of five and opportunity at Arsenal falling through when he was 12.
Since joining the academy, he had interest from Newcastle, Everton and Brighton, he said. “It would be great to have this amazing facility in the borough of Greenwich,” Joel told the committee. “To have a safe place to keep practising would mean so much for me and hundreds of boys and girls.”
GB10 directors Brett Smith and Garry Fiore said they wanted to deliver a “safe, vibrant, community-focused sports hub”. AFC Greenwich Borough is a community interest company that owns 80 per cent of GB10 Sports, they said.
Smith said their bid to buy the ground had beaten competing offers from David Lloyd and housing developers.
He added: “We were not the highest bidder, but the feedback from the Co-op was that they selected us as the new custodians of the ground based on our community and social value footprint and upon our plans to bring this dilapidated ground back to life as a sustainable, community sports venue.”
Residents had complained about mature trees on the site being cut down after GB10 moved in, which Smith called “absolutely regrettable”. About 180 trees will be planted as part of the project.
Smith said that based on their testing, he believed that the padel courts would generate less noise than when tennis was played there, and insisted that six padel courts were needed for the site to be sustainable. He said that floodlighting would only be directed at the pitches and would not be shining into people’s homes.
Planning officers said a strict noise condition would be placed on the padel courts to protect neighbours.
Dave Sullivan, a Labour councillor for Kidbrooke Village, backed the plans. He said: “What’s being proposed here is an excellent contribution to the wellbeing of residents living in this borough. Of course there are some people that are losers, everyone cannot be a winner, but we know we are benefitting thousands of people, not just now but for generations, and I think we should be supporting this.”
Conservative councillor Pat Greenwell, who represents Eltham Town, said the proposal pitted “the wider community against the local community” and feared traffic problems, particularly rat-running in nearby Cambridge Drive because of a no-right-turn restriction upon leaving the ground.
The inclusion of padel courts “was just too much” when it came to noise, she said.
But the other six councillors on the planning board backed the plans on Tuesday night after more than two and a half hours of discussions, citing the health and fitness benefits of the new facilities.
AFC Greenwich Borough’s senior men’s team currently plays at Holmesdale FC’s ground, near Bromley Common. The club has confirmed to The Greenwich Wire that the side, which plays in the tenth-tier Southern Counties East Football League Division 1, will be moving to the GB10 ground once works are completed.
The new side is a separate entity from the old Greenwich Borough club, which played at Harrow Meadow in Eltham for more than 70 years until 2009, before going out of business in 2020.
Updated at 10.45pm on December 8 to clarify that the senior men’s team will be moving into the ground and to correct a line about padel courts and floodlighting.
📩 Follow The Greenwich Wire on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn or Threads. You can also sign up for WhatsApp alerts– or subscribe to our emails through the blue box above.
Cameron Blackshaw is the Local Democracy Reporter for Greenwich and Bexley. The Greenwich Wire is a partner in the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which is a BBC-funded initiative to ensure councils are covered properly in local media.
You must be logged in to post a comment.