‘Community spaces are being taken away’: campaigners rail at rise of pay-to-play padel courts

Proposals to convert skateparks, children’s play areas and basketball courts have angered residents

Aiwa Saito and her children are among the many families who were regulars at Barking Skate Park. But after they skated here for more than five years, London’s only full-size indoor skate park closed on Sunday – to be replaced with padel courts.

Padel is one of the UK’s fastest-growing sports, according to the Lawn Tennis Association, and the plan to convert Barking Skate Park is the latest in a series of proposals across London. However, some plans that have sought to build pay-to-play padel courts on top of existing spaces have angered residents and sparked claims of “gentrification” and community displacement.

Saito no longer feels she has a safe, indoor space in the capital to take her kids skating. “Outdoor skate parks aren’t safe for children, particularly teenage girls,” she says.

“Parents already tell their girls: ‘You have to be really careful when you go skateboarding, which park you go to. It’s not safe.’ And to take that away, with no alternative, is unacceptable.”

Saito has high hopes for her 11-year-old daughter, Toko, who is on Skateboard GB’s talent pathway programme and hopes to one day compete internationally. But after the closure of Barking Skate Park, Saito worries if she will be able to keep Toko’s ambition alive.

“To make her dreams come true, we need the right facilities,” she says. “Without an indoor park, on a wet weekend in winter, where do we go? Where can she train?”

And it is not just the parents of aspiring Olympians who worry about the closure of the park. “It’s important to the local community,” says Eleanor Dunlop, who led the campaign to save the venue. “Parents come here to socialise, they bring their kids to be active. Barking and Dagenham is one of the most deprived parts of the country, and people really need this space to be accessible.

I’ve seen panic in people’s faces when I told them that it could close, because they’re saying: ‘Where am I going to take my kids?’”

The council says that while it owns the freehold on the site, the skate park (and wider sports complex) is run independently by a charity, GLL, which has the right to determine what sports it offers. Barking and Dagenham Council argues that “GLL has advised that the skatepark has been operating at a financial loss for a number of years and that it intends to replace it with indoor padel courts.

“It should be noted that equipment from Barking Skatepark has been distributed to skateparks in the wider area, and will be enjoyed by skateboarders for years to come.”

Part of the backlash to the “padel boom” among local residents can be explained by the cost of playing the sport, which at an average of £51 an hour for a court in London according to the racket sports app Playtomic, means that many feel they will not be the ones to benefit from new facilities.

“It’s so expensive, it just feels exclusive,” Dunlop says.

The price and popularity of padel has attracted investors and private equity firms to build lucrative courts and clubs. According to LTA figures, in the past seven years alone the number of padel courts in the UK has increased by more than 2,500%, from 68 in 2019 to more than 1,800 today.

Saito says that before taking up skating, her daughter used to attend a community gymnastics centre in Beckton. That was until the building, 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,” she says, explaining that while the gymnastics club moved to Newham Leisure Centre, the facilities were not as specialised as those at Beckton and her daughter’s friends all dispersed. “Now her main sport is going to be taken away. It just feels crazy.”

In Bethnal Green, meanwhile, the local council installed a £24-an-hour, pay-to-play padel court in the middle of an open, multi-use area shared by people freely roller‑skating, playing basketball, and skateboarding.

“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,” says the campaigner Lillie Almond, who is fighting to remove the padel court.

“The padel court has obviously changed who’s now using this space, and how,” she adds. “This all results in the removal of culturally rich, diverse, long-standing communities – who are replaced with padel players.”

In Camden, councillor Hamza Chowdhury campaigned to stop a free children’s sandpit and play area being bulldozed to make way for padel courts. After more than a year of protests, the £2m proposal was rejected last week.

“If the goal was to get more people active, why not invest in a free, all-weather basketball or football court?” says Chowdhury. “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, University of London, says the plans in Camden, Bethnal Green and Barking reflect a broader pattern of rising gentrification across London.

“Gentrification is about the restriction of land,” he says.

“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.”

Though Barking Skate Park officially closed on Sunday, Dunlop and her fellow campaigners are still fighting to halt construction. With backing from the local MP, Nesil Caliskan, and Skateboard GB, the sport’s national governing body, as well as an online petition that has gained more than 4,500 signatures, she hopes they can stop the development, as Chowdhury did in Camden.

“Not listening to people who occupy a space, and then going in and changing it, is gentrification,” Dunlop says.

“I can’t comment on padel as a sport, whether I like it or not. I just don’t believe that 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. “The trial supports our work to increase access to a wider range of sports and improve the health and wellbeing of our residents,” they added.

GLL and Camden Council have been approached for comment.