Campaigners protest growth of pay-to-play padel courts after Barking skatepark closure
Campaigners and local residents in London have protested the conversion of community sports areas into pay-to-play padel facilities after Barking Skate Park closed on Sunday and is due to be replaced with indoor padel courts, part of a wave of similar proposals across the city.
Padel has expanded rapidly in the UK, with Lawn Tennis Association figures showing the number of courts rose by more than 2,500% from 68 in 2019 to more than 1,800 in the past seven years, and market data from Playtomic giving an average London court cost of £51 an hour; that price point, and investor interest, is cited by campaigners as a reason many local people cannot access new facilities. Barking and Dagenham council said it owns the freehold of the site but that the skate park and wider complex are run independently by the charity GLL, which it said advised the skatepark had been operating at a financial loss and intends to replace it with indoor padel courts, adding that equipment from Barking Skatepark has been distributed to skateparks in the wider area.
Aiwa Saito, who skated at Barking Skate Park for more than five years with her children, said the loss leaves them without a safe indoor place to skate and voiced concern for her 11-year-old daughter, Toko, who is on Skateboard GB’s talent pathway programme. “Outdoor skate parks aren’t safe for children, particularly teenage girls,” Saito said. “To make her dreams come true, we need the right facilities,” she added. “Without an indoor park, on a wet weekend in winter, where do we go? Where can she train?”
Eleanor Dunlop, who led the campaign to save the venue, said the skatepark was important to the local community and described public alarm when closure was announced. “It’s important to the local community,” she said. “I’ve seen panic in people’s faces when I told them it could close, because they’re saying: ‘Where am I going to take my kids?’” Dunlop and fellow campaigners have secured backing from the local MP, Nesil Caliskan, and Skateboard GB, and an online petition opposing the replacement has gathered more than 4,500 signatures as they continue efforts to halt construction.
Saito said her family have already lost access to another facility after a gymnastics centre in Beckton, a designated “asset of community value”, was sold to a developer and converted into a private padel club despite local opposition and an online petition signed by almost 10,000 people. “One of her two sports was already taken away because of Padel,” Saito said, adding that the gymnastics club moved to Newham Leisure Centre and that her daughter’s friends dispersed.
In Bethnal Green a council-installed padel court, priced at £24 an hour, occupies a multi-use open area used by rollerskaters, skateboarders and basketball players, prompting local opposition led by campaigner Lillie Almond. “Being able to spontaneously come and go from a space like this, means one less financial restriction on how we use our free time, which in today’s world is already inhibited by just how expensive everything is,” Almond said. “The padel court has obviously changed who’s now using this space, and how. This all results in the removal of culturally rich, diverse, longstanding communities who are replaced with padel players.”
In Camden, councillor Hamza Chowdhury campaigned against a plan to replace a free children’s sandpit and play area with padel courts; after more than a year of local protests the £2m proposal was rejected last month. “If the goal was to get more people active, why not invest in a free, all-weather basketball or football court?” Chowdhury said. “Growing sport should never come at the cost of shrinking free public space. We should be adding to our communities, not taking away from them.”
Oli Mould, professor of social, cultural and historical geography at Royal Holloway, said the Camden, Bethnal Green and Barking cases form part of a broader pattern in London: “Gentrification is about the restriction of land,” he said. “What’s happening is people taking land away and putting a physical barrier around it so it can be given to people who will pay. Any time that happens, that is gentrification.”
Campaigners in Barking remain engaged in attempts to stop the development despite the skate park’s closure, citing the displacement of existing users and urging alternatives to paid facilities. Dunlop said: “Not listening to people who occupy a space and then going in and changing it is gentrification. I can’t comment on padel as a sport, whether I like it or not. I just don’t believe it should displace the people who are already there. Having community spaces is so important and they’re being taken away.” A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets council said the padel court at Bethnal Green Gardens is part of a trial using one out of five multi-use areas available, adding: “The trial supports our work to increase access to a wider range of sports and improve the health and wellbeing of our residents.” GLL and Camden council have been approached for comment.