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Newsletter Autumn 2024

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Updated: Oct 18, 2024

Newsletter Autumn 2024

Chairman’s Report

Changing of the Guard

They say that a week in politics is a long time. What can you say about nineteen years other than well done! On Pages 6 and 7 you will find a personal message from Stephen Hammond, now happily retired from his duties as our MP.

After 19 years as our representative in parliament, he certainly deserves a great big thankyou from us all for the tremendous job he has done and, dare I say, with great honesty and integrity, which sadly is not always the case with all those elected to Parliament.

We are delighted to know that he and Sally, whose efficient running of his office over the long span of years has been equally impressive, will be remaining in Wimbledon Park for the foreseeable future.

Stephen, of course, has been a great supporter of the SWP campaign to oppose the AELTC proposals for developing the Wimbledon Park Golf Course. In the first year (2021) he organised two meetings with the Chairman and CEO, which unfortunately revealed a very entrenched position on their part and no desire to discuss alternatives. ‘There is no Plan B’! During the last three years of the SWP campaign – yes it has now been three years since the campaign started to oppose the AELTC planning proposals – the campaign has made considerable progress and has been greatly aided by the support from Stephen and also Fleur Anderson, MP for Putney and Roehampton (Labour), which resulted in a joint statement (August 2022) deploring the inappropriate scale of the plans and urging both Councils to reject the application. Such a joint statement of any kind, by MPs on opposite sides of the house, was virtually unheard of. Since that time Fleur Anderson, in particular, has been continuous and very vocal in support.

Quite early in the piece, another voice was being heard at Council meetings (Merton), that of Paul Kohler, then Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Wimbledon,who declared his opposition to the AELTC plans and not once but three times attempted to get Merton Council to change their position on the question of the Covenants contained in the sale documents of the Golf Course to the

AELTC in 1993. The Council said they would ‘respect’ the Covenants but refused to change the wording to ‘enforce’.

We now have Paul Kohler as our MP and he has hit the ground running by submitting an ‘early day motion’ to the ‘House’ on July 24th: ‘That this House congratulates the All England Lawn Tennis Club on this year's successful Championships; acknowledges the Club's status as the host of the world’s premier tennis tournament; recognises their plans to build a 10 storey stadium, nine further outbuildings, 38 tennis courts and over 9km of roads on Capability Brown's historic parkland in Wimbledon Park; notes the impact the proposed expansion will have on both the local community and the environment; urges the Club to fully and constructively engage with residents and other

stakeholders to reach a compromise that addresses the needs of all parties; and calls upon the All England Club to honour and abide by the solemn promises and legal undertakings they committed to when they originally purchased this environmentally significant area of Metropolitan Open Land.’




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