May 2025 Update

Planning Permission

We continue to receive great support from East Lothian Council, and they have just informed us that the plans for Memorial Park which include the East Lothian Padel Club facility have successfully passed the ‘Pre-planning’ stage of the planning process. They anticipate submitting a full planning application by the end of June.

Padel Club Design

We’ve been working hard over the last two months to narrow down the design of the Padel Courts and enclosure, plus identify suitable suppliers, and tie down the build costs.

We have now appointed a company to oversee the technical design and the Building Warrant application for the new structure. They will also then undertake the detailed management of the construction phase of the facility. The image below provides a rough idea of how it might look together with some initial thoughts on layout.

Governance

After consultation with various tax experts and accountancy firms we have decided to initially set the Club up as a Private Company Limited by Guarantee, and have now opened a bank account accordingly. We will be registering the club as a Charity, although this process will take several months to complete.

Funding

We should soon have a better handle on the final cost of setting up the Club, but it’s likely to be around the £450k mark. We have raised £100k of this so far and are currently looking for people who are either prepared to donate money towards the club, or lend the club money, in order to fill the gap. In addition we are also contacting grant providers.

If you are interested, or know of anyone who is interested in providing funding on either a grant or loan basis then please click here or get in touch.

Similarly, if you have experience in making funding applications to grant providers and would like to help, please get in touch.

Membership

We currently have over 350 people who have asked to be kept informed about the progress of the Club, and this bodes well for creating a strong membership base. Once we get further down the road we will provide more details on likely pricing, and also membership arrangements.

Next Steps

As you can see it’s been a very busy period. We still intend to have an Open Meeting soon, and more details will be provided nearer the time.