Plans for a new padel court centre have been amended with the planning documents also detailing the proposed operator
A new padel court centre is set to be built on the top of the Gracechurch Centre’s multi-storey car park in Sutton Coldfield
A Birmingham shopping venue has applied to make changes to its plans for a new padel court centre, which will sit atop its car park.
The owners of the Gracechurch Centre in Sutton Coldfield had previously applied for a new racquet court leisure venue on the roof of its multi-storey.
The application, submitted at the end of 2025, was for a rooftop extension and to repurpose the top levels of the car park for ‘sports courts and associated clubhouse’, to include changing rooms and a restaurant/café.
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The racquet court area was originally meant to include four padel courts, surrounding one larger tennis court.
But a new plan has now been submitted to birmingham-city-council>Birmingham City Council to remove the tennis court and instead have four more padel courts – some eight in total doubling the padel court offer.
The application mentions the proposed operator, Padel Tree, which currently operates seven clubs in London, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire.
The top two levels of the Gracechurch Centre car park are closed to motorists in readiness for the new padel court development
The original padel and tennis courts proposal was approved in February this year, with approval for it to be open from 7am to 10pm daily.
But now an application has been submitted by BPG Gracechurch Ltd to vary (change) two conditions of that planning permission – the first condition 2, to change the planned four padel courts and one tennis court to eight padel courts.
And then condition 7, to extend the opening hours to 7am to 11pm, an increase of an hour, and matching the times set out in the Noise Impact Assessment prepared by Air and Acoustics Consultants for the original planning application.
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Emilios Tsavellas, development director at applicants, BPG Gracechurch Lt, confirmed the proposals to go all in on padel courts, as detailed above.
And the slight increase in proposed opening hours.
He said: “No other aspect of the approved scheme is impacted.”
The footprint of the proposed club would remain the same in terms of the roof extension, clubhouse and the total courts area, albeit the configuration changes and tennis is dropped.
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Mr Tsavellas added: “The additional capacity of the courts will be an extra 12 people per hour (4 people per net extra court), which is de minimis in scale and will not cause any noticeable change to comings and goings.
“The proposed extension to hours from 10pm to 11pm will allow for an additional sessions across the courts, helping the overall feasibility for the proposed padel court operator. It also complies with the findings of the original noise report.
“A timely decision will ensure that Padel Tree, who operate sites across the UK and Europe, can come in as an operator.”
The application, number: 2026/05418/PA, is currently in a public consultation period until October 12.
