EIR - London Wildlife Trust submission on Wimbledon Park Proposals [Jan 2025]

Your request 

I request a copy of a submission by London Wildlife Trust to the Mayor of London on the planning application for the proposals on Wimbledon Park Golf Course and Lake. This submission was referred to in paragraph 200 of the Representation Hearing Report (GLA/2024/0045/S3 & GLA2024/0047/S3) which stated that "On 7 June 0224 an updated response was received from the London Wildlife Trust". It is not clear whether this paragraph 200 reproduces the whole LWT submission, or extracts from it and the submission does not appear to have been published.

Our response

Please find attached the information that the GLA holds within the scope of your request:

Ref. 21/P2900 – Wimbledon Park Golf Club

June 2024 
FAO: Jules Pipe CBE Greater London Authority Union Street, 
London,  
SE1 0LL 
Dear Jules, 

In late 2021 London Wildlife Trust (‘the Trust’) undertook a review ‘The Wimbledon Park Project’, the proposals by the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) to reconfigure part of Wimbledon Park Golf Course and lake, which lies adjacent to the AELTC Wimbledon facilities.  

Since then, we have reviewed the suite of documents submitted as part of the planning application, including the latest planning addendum submitted to the GLA. We have also visited the site on a number of occasions, including the area that is now proposed as a northern parkland outside of The Championships period. With the AELTC’s support we have worked closely with the ecology and landscape design team from Land Use Consultants (LUC), who are leading the design of the proposals, to help establish an accurate assessment of the current condition of habitats on site and the potential condition of habitats created and enhanced through these proposals.  

Over the course of the past 6 months this has involved utilising DEFRA’s Biodiversity Net Gain Metric (3.0) in order to assess whether the scheme meets the objectives of achieving at least 10% uplift from the baseline assessment. We have scrutinised LUC’s evaluation of the proposals using BNG Metric 3.1 and are confident that they reflect an accurate assessment of the baseline value of habitats and a pragmatic, if not conservative, assessment of the net gains for biodiversity that can be achieved if the proposals are delivered as planned. 

The updated proposals continue to project a higher net gain for biodiversity score according to DEFRA’s current metric and methodology. This score is predicated on achieving habitat enhancements and gains in a practical time-scale, and that the losses of some habitats are primarily those of poor and/or highly degraded value.  We endorse LUC’s assessment using the BNG metric, recognising that it is a tool to inform the design of the proposals and to highlight where and what to focus on in terms of habitat creation and enhancement, in particular: daylighting of the brooks, the reedbeds alongside the lake, and the expansion of neutral/acid grassland on the eastern flank. 

As stated in our previous correspondence, the Trust’s ambition is to see all suitable land in London managed as sympathetically as possible for wildlife and to maximise opportunities for local people to experience and enjoy nature as close as possible to where they live. We acknowledge that our ambitions have to be achieved in the context of a dynamic, ever-changing city with multiple legitimate and sometimes conflicting uses of land. We want to collaborate with landowners who are actively seeking to improve the ecological value of their land by integrating it with their primary purpose for owning and managing their land. 

Having had the opportunity to extensively review all of the AELTC project documentation and for the Trust’s staff to visit the site on many occasions and understand the context and ambition of the proposals, I can confirm that LWT fully supports this ambitious and complex project and we will continue to explore further how we can work with the AELTC to showcase how other such schemes can deliver for nature. 

Yours sincerely, 

David Mooney 
CEO