Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club
38, Magdalen Road,
London SW18 3NP
Wandsworth Council
Planning Service
The Town Hall
Wandsworth High Street
London SW18 2PU
17 January 2014
Letter of Objection to Planning Application reference: 2013/8523 relating to:
Magdalen Park Bowls Club proposed development for “Demolition of existing clubhouse, erection of replacement clubhouse with internal bowling rink and erection of nine residential units”
Dear Sirs,
We are the the adjoining owners to the application site and share a boundary with the site to the south which is over 80 metres long. Our tennis club will be seriously affected by the proposal and we list our objections to it below:
Objection 1 – The site vehicular access proposal from Magdalen Road is not feasible or acceptable to the affected adjoining land owner.
Background
- The applicant has rights over only a 2.4m strip of land between Magdalen Road and the application site. Since Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club control the remaining 5.6m width of this proposed vehicular access route it will not be possible for the scheme to be implemented without the agreement of us as the adjoining land owner.
- Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club have an unexpired and renewable lease of 15 years on the land in question with 12 years unexpired.
Reasons for objection
- Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club object to the annexation of the land that they control. .
Appraisal
- The application accepts that “Due to the fact that the Heathfield Road area is a private estate it is believed that negotiations to form any new access or gain access from this area onto the site would be protracted and difficult, and these aspirations have been halted after initial i nvestigations.”
- This leaves only the route from Magdalen Road as a possible vehicular access.
- The application proposes 13 parking spaces on the site which includes parking on land leased to
Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club which is currently allowed as a courtesy but will not be permitted after close of the 2014 summer bowls season when a fence will be erected along the boundary line
- The proposal site will require vehicular access for the emergency services particularly for fire- fighting.
- Disabled access to the bowling club and the proposed houses will require road access into the site.
- There is no possibility of traffic passing within the narrow confines of the available access width presenting a danger for vehicles waiting for access in Magdalen Road.
- Access by pedestrians to and from Strickland Row is dangerous as the road is narrow, traffic moves quickly and there is no pavement.
- Residents in houses on the development facing Strickland Row are very likely to use that access road as it will be much closer to their properties than Magdalen Road so causing congestion and additional parked vehicles along a narrow, inadequate road.
- Under Approved Document H6 of the Building Regulations clause 1.8 there is a maximum distance that household waste can be carried of 30m. The distance of the proposal site from a refuse collection vehicle parked on Magdalen Road would be over 35m.

Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club
38, Magdalen Road,
London SW18 3NP
Conclusions
- It is our submission that the application should not have been validated without a notice being served to us as land owners affected by the application and also upon the owner of adjacent land to the West. Once these correct notices have been served the consultation period should start again and the application deferred accordingly.
- We submit that the Council are now obliged to require that the application is withdrawn and not validated until the correct notices have been served on us as leaseholders of the land which is incorporated into the application site area and upon the freehold owners of land to the West
- We submit that the Council should not grant any consent on this land until all vehicular access issues are resolved in compliance with Council policy with the agreement of the adjoining landowners affected.
Objection 2 – The financial viability arguments that seek to support the application are not valid.
Background
- The application proposes that “As a method of securing sufficient funds to redevelop the bowling club and provide a new usage for the site that works in accordance with planning requirements a proposed new residential development on the second bowling green is seen as the only deliverable method of realising the proposals,”
Reasons for objection
- We believe that financial argument put vaguely in the Design and Access statement conceals an intention to develop a highly profitable housing development, which is contrary to Council Policy
PL4 (Core Policy for Places) which seeks to protect open space, under the guise of a proposal to provide an indoor sport facility.
Appraisal
The application proposes an indoor sports centre with a gross internal floor area of
1050 sq m.
The gross internal floor area of the 9 houses is 792 sq m in the application.
The total area of new building proposed in the application is thus 1842 sq m.
It is reasonable to assume, with current London building prices, that this development could be built for between £3.5m and £4m inclusive of a profit for the builder and associated costs such as fees.
The current advice on the Zoopla website is that residential floor space in houses in this area will sell for £634 per sq ft. There are 8521 sq ft of residential floor space in the application. At current values the scheme that is proposed to cross subsidize the sports centre is therefore worth over £5.4m.
The resultant clear profit contained in the application would appear to be between £1.4m and
£1.9m (or between 35% and 55% of the cost)
Conclusions
We submit that the Council should not grant consent on a scheme that has not proved the claim that it makes that the houses are necessary to pay for the sports centre.
We submit that the applicant explores a single storey indoor sports centre where the clubhouse is currently sited as that is more economical to construct than the elaborate and bulky structure in the application. The number of houses necessary to pay for this more modest scheme should be kept to the minimum necessary to justify the scheme in order to respect the important Council Policy PL4 which seeks to protect open space. In that way all open space enjoyed currently would remain.
Objection 3 – The proposal compromises the safety and security of our adjoining site.
The proposal will allow the public full access to the north boundary of our property and this is likely to increase the probability of vandalism which has been problem in the past on our site.

Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club
38, Magdalen Road,
London SW18 3NP
Objection 4 – The application design proposals for the indoor sports building is completely out of scale in terms of bulk in relation to the surrounding townscape and adjacent conservation areas.
The new sports building has a proposed eaves height of about 8.4m. The nearest houses in
Magdalen Road and Heathfield Road do not exceed 5m at eaves level. The sports building is hard on our boundary and 36m long. In simple terms it is totally out of scale with the surrounding area. The same facilities could easily and more cheaply be provided in a single storey building more in keeping with its neighbours.
Objection 5 – The proposal is an overdevelopment of the site.
The application site is open space used for recreation and a valuable resource for the
Borough and the local community. A large housing development with an ancilliary sports building is an overdevelopment of the site and a contravention of the Council’s own Open
Space policies. The objective of finding a sustainable future for the Bowling Club we support but only if it focusses on the Bowling club as the primary use on the site with any other buildings to fund it being strictly subsidiary. The long term interests of retaining this land for recreation use are not best served with a significant housing development.
Yours faithfully
Alexandra Adam
On behalf of
Magdalen Park Lawn Tennis Club