Billericay LTC are delighted to announce that, on 24th November 2013, their new, 3-court airdome was officially opened by Jeremy Bates, the former British Davis Cup player and captain.
16 years after their first (of many) attempts to get planning consent and with the funding for the £240,000 project in place, the club’s volunteer management team has finally achieved their dream of ‘indoor’ courts. A great example of ‘never giving up’.
The project consisted of completely removing fencing around 3 existing tarmacadam courts so that a concrete ring beam that would provide the airdome fixing points could be constructed, resurfacing the courts with an artificial clay surface, providing a single skin airdome over all three courts and installing new fencing together with all ancillary requirements. Work started immediately after the club had hosted the annual, week long, grade 3, Essex Open Tennis Tournament on 5th August and came in, on time and under budget, on 1st October.
Billericay LTC is now the proud freehold owner of a four-acre ground complete with clubhouse and 10 floodlit courts, three of which will be covered for the 6 winter months of the year.
This, in fact, is the second major project the club’s Main Committee had completed having moved the club, lock stock and barrel from its previous 1-acre, 5 court site in 1997 to its current site. At that time the club had received an ‘in principle’ grant of £553,000 from the Lottery Fund only to fail to get planning consent for the proposed indoor courts after an appeal against the local council’s decision to the then Department of Environment failed on the grounds that our ground was in the green belt. The club was bitterly disappointed.
They refused to give in however and after a number of setbacks and with the support of their MP, John Baron, and an increasingly helpful local authority planning team received planning permission for a seasonal airdome (to be available from 1st October to 31st March each year), in December 2011. The project had to be started by December 2014, which should not have been a problem.
Once again the club was to be disappointed.
By the beginning of 2013 it was clear that, unfortunately, the LTA was not going to be in a position to assist financially. The club would have to look elsewhere for financial support. We found it with the Essex County LTA who, some years earlier had the foresight to put aside funds on an annual basis in order to fund future, Essex based, tennis initiatives. Their plan was to provide low (or zero) interest rate loans to appropriate projects in order to recycle those monies into further tennis projects. After satisfying them that the plan was sustainable by the club, from both a financial and management perspective, they offered us a £120,000, zero interest rate loan, repayable over seven years – an offer the club was delighted to take up.
The club has already seen a stream of new members and enquiries from clubs & schools as a direct result of the availability of the air dome which now provides quality playing and coaching conditions during the winter months at Billericay and the club still has numerous plans and ideas for the future.
Richard Lehman
Billericay LTC Hon Treasurer
richard_lehman@hotmail.com