Sutton Council's Planning Committee met on Wednesday to review a request from Wallington County Grammar School (WCGS) to extend the hours of operation for public use of its sports hall.
The school aims to increase opportunities for the local community to use the sports facilities, which in turn, would increase income for the school. WCGS stated that the significant reduction in real terms funding for schools since 2010 means that schools have to be ever more entrepreneurial in raising funds to ensure a high quality education for students.
The proposal seeks to extend the existing permitted weekday evening use by one hour, pushing the finish time to 22:00 instead of 21:00, and to allow for weekend use between 08:00 and 22:00. The sports hall is used for a number of indoor sports including cricket, badminton, basketball, football, netball and table tennis. Activities incorporate people of all ages, from children's cricket to adult's badminton.
The application, referenced as DM2025/00390 in the Public Reports Pack, was de-delegated by Councillor Barry Lewis due to concerns about potential access, traffic, and parking issues. The Agenda stated that Councillor Jayne McCoy, Chair of the Planning Committee, presided over the meeting.
The school has off-street parking for 42 cars, which is considered adequate as use of the hall is restricted to a maximum of 40 people. Transport for London (TFL) and Environmental Health raised no objections.
The lettings are managed by LRSO Ltd, a professional lettings management company. LRSO provides staff for every single customer letting, whose responsibility it is to ensure that lettings are run correctly, and the buildings / car parks are secure and clean at the end of the day. All customer bookings are managed by the LSRO booking system, Bookteq
, which the school can access to monitor customer usage.
Seventeen letters of objection were received, raising concerns about parking on surrounding roads. To mitigate these concerns, the Car Park Management Plan commits to:
- Advising any groups wishing to use the sports hall that parking, and any possible disruption that this might cause, is a primary concern for the school.
- Making it a condition of any letting that groups using the sports hall will agree that they will only park in the school grounds, and not in the surrounding roads.
- Ensuring that a WCGS member of staff is on site for the whole time of the letting to deal with any issues arising, and more specifically to ensure that all group members can access the site for parking.
- If another event is taking place on the school site (eg, Parents evening), the WCGS member site staff and Lettings company on duty will monitor the parking situation, and when it becomes apparent that there may be a greater demand for spaces than is normally available, will open the playgrounds to allow for additional parking and direct cars to that overflow facility.
- As part of the schools initiative to work more closely with the local community, all local residents will be informed as to how they can raise any issues with the school so that they can be addressed as quickly as possible.
The council's Highway Officer raised no objections to the Car Park Management Plan, stating that the 42 car parking spaces available on site are sufficient to accommodate the proposed public use of the school's sports facilities. It was noted that there would be no parking overspill on to the surrounding road network.
The sports hall has operated successfully since 2019 for use by the public for indoor sport. The sports hall is already in use by the public out of school hours and the proposal would not result in any operational development or change of use, but would result in an intensification of the existing use of the land. Namely, for 1 additional hour in the evening on weekdays (until 22:00) and on weekends (08:00 to 22:00).
