Winsford to become first UK town with council-run affordable padel courts

Winsford Town Council approved plans for the town’s first padel courts at its meeting on Monday, June 15, 2025, setting up a council-run facility at Over Recreation Ground on the site of a former tennis court and an unused training bowling green. The scheme was backed alongside a new multi-use games area at Wharton Recreation Ground, marking a rare public-sector push into a sport that is still usually associated with private clubs and premium pricing.

That pricing gap is the point of the project. Private padel court hire can run from £30 to £60 an hour, and councillors said the Winsford courts were intended to be a cheaper alternative for local players. Wayne Fletcher, the Winsford town councillor for Verdin ward, said the aim was to make the courts “affordable” and give local people another way to get active. In practical terms, that means council ownership will shape the economics from the start, with public land and local control replacing the higher-fee model that dominates most of the UK market.

The timing reflects how quickly padel has moved from niche to mainstream in Britain. A Winsford Town Council report dated May 6, 2025 said the sport had more than 90,000 active players in 2024, up from 6,000 in 2019. The same report put the cost of a basic court at about £28,000 to £35,000, rising to £70,000 to £85,000 for a professional indoor or canopy-covered court. It also noted that there were padel courts at two locations in Hartford but no other clubs nearby, making Winsford’s entry into the sport a local first rather than another addition to an already crowded market.

The court layout also points to a low-friction conversion strategy. The old tennis court at Over Recreation Ground and the unused training bowling green already exist as sports space, and the council’s plan uses that footprint rather than requiring a greenfield build. The accompanying MUGA at Wharton Recreation Ground will be created from part of the existing hard-standing area, another sign that the town is trying to stretch public assets into more active use without the price tag of a full new-build sports complex.

Winsford’s move sits inside a bigger regeneration effort. Cheshire West and Chester Council said in June 2025 that the first phase of its £22 million town-centre project had been completed, with Kier Construction having started work in spring 2023, and described it as the biggest investment in the shopping area since the 1960s. Against that backdrop, council-run padel is more than a new amenity: it is a test of whether a town can use public land and public pricing to broaden access to a sport that has grown sharply, but still remains expensive for many players.

The Lawn Tennis Association said in May 2025 that more than 400,000 people played padel in Britain in 2024, more than trebling from the previous year, and that there were 68 courts in 2019 before numbers rose sharply. Winsford’s courts will be watched closely as a possible model for how local authorities can bring that growth into reach for ordinary players.