Padel People wins approval for three new UK venues

Padel People has won planning approval for three new venues in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, a move that will add 16 indoor courts to its UK estate. If the projects are built out, the independent operator says it will grow from six locations to nine by the end of 2026, widening its reach beyond its current base in Basingstoke, Sedlescombe and Wimbledon.

That matters because indoor courts change the economics of padel. They lengthen the usable season, reduce weather disruption and give clubs a steadier booking profile for members, coaching blocks and casual pay-and-play sessions. Padel People has framed the new sites as part of a push to bring access to underserved communities, which puts the approvals in a different category from a simple property win: they are also a play for more local entry points in counties that sit outside the sport’s earliest London-centric growth.

The company’s run team, George Sandbach and James Rock, has already shown a taste for practical expansion. Padel People’s Corsham project was converted from an existing building into a new indoor venue in an eight-week refurbishment with a reported project value of £130,000, a useful template for a business trying to turn planning approvals into playable courts quickly. The new Oxfordshire project appears on Cherwell District Council’s register as application 25/00348/F, while Wiltshire Council lists application PL/2024/07034 for padel courts, canopies, a customer kiosk, hardstanding and enclosure works.

The wider market helps explain why three approvals carry weight now. Searchland says UK planning applications for padel courts rose 113% in 2024, climbing from 163 to 348, and its analysis puts nearly 17,000 potential sites in play for development. That is a strong pipeline, but it also highlights how crowded the planning path has become as councils weigh noise, land use and site suitability against demand for courts.

Dorset adds another marker to that national spread. Local reporting has pointed to padel proposals at Three Legged Cross and at a former industrial site, underlining that the sport’s next phase is no longer confined to one city or one developer. Padel People’s latest approvals suggest the UK boom is now being tested by whether it can turn planning permission into durable regional infrastructure, with indoor courts at the centre of that shift.