Unsworth club wins approval for five new padel courts

Unsworth Cricket and Tennis Club has won approval for five new padel courts in Bury, moving a project that was previously at the planning stage into the next phase of the club’s expansion. The decision adds another marker to the sport’s rapid rise in the UK, where local clubs are increasingly trying to turn padel interest into permanent court space.

The Unsworth scheme matters because it is not a one-court experiment. Five courts give a club room to stage more than a handful of casual sessions: they create space for back-to-back bookings, structured coaching blocks and a wider mix of members and non-members using the facility at the same time. At club level, that scale is often the difference between a novelty and a participation engine.

Bury Times had already reported on new plans to bring padel facilities to Unsworth, and the approval shows the project has now cleared the key hurdle. For a traditional multi-sport club like Unsworth Cricket and Tennis Club, the move fits a wider pattern across the UK, where tennis and cricket venues are trying to use padel as a way to broaden access and keep their grounds active throughout the week.

The pressure behind that shift is visible elsewhere. In Bradford, Woodlands Cricket Club said almost 50 new padel courts were needed to meet demand, underscoring how quickly interest can outstrip available courts once a club starts operating padel seriously. That scale of demand helps explain why five courts at Unsworth will be watched closely by other clubs weighing whether to add the sport to their own sites.

The approvals also come against a planning backdrop that has become familiar around the game. Some padel applications have met resistance from nearby residents or existing sports users, with objections often focused on noise, floodlighting and the loss of space already used for other activities. That tension is part of the sport’s growth story in Britain: clubs want to capture demand, while communities want assurances that new facilities will not overwhelm the sites they sit on.

At Unsworth, the decision gives the club a route to join the next wave of padel development at grass-roots level. Five courts are enough to change how a club books, coaches and opens its gates, and that is exactly why this approval is more than a routine planning notice.