OFFICIALS behind the new five-court padel facility in St Clement are ‘actively looking’ at options for a satellite venue in the west of Jersey.
Island Padel co-founder Scott Clayton has confirmed that an expansion of their project is being considered, following a hugely successful 2022, although he has stressed that meaningful progress will not be made until the time is right.
The news comes after a separate, online petition was launched, calling for the Government of Jersey to consider supporting a westerly-based padel development.
‘The fact that people are looking for it [a venue in the west] is great,’ said former tennis professional Clayton, who played a key role in securing permission to built three indoor courts at the Recreation Grounds last year.
‘We said we would look to potentially expand ourselves at some stage, if the demand was there, and we as a company have been actively looking at other sites recently which will target the other side of the Island. It makes sense for it to be out west.’
However, he had words of warning.
‘What we did before we put our new courts in was a lot of due diligence on other countries,’ Clayton explained. ‘The main ones were the Nordic countries, where it has really taken off recently, and Spain. What we found, particularly in the Nordic countries, is that courts were becoming derelict because they had too many. We don’t want there to be too much capacity in terms of courts and through our due diligence we worked out that one court per 20,000 people is enough when you’re starting out. That’s why we came up with five to start with, for our population of roughly 100,000.
‘Jersey is still very much in that 1 for 20,000 ratio. We just need to make sure it’s done at the right time, although I don’t think we’re a million miles away.’
Clayton said a significant amount of time and energy is also required to maintain the interest.
‘One of the reasons the courts are being used so often now is because there is a lot of work going on in the background,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have people driving it – putting on programmes for school kids, for example – you will have a situation where you risk the courts just sitting there.
‘Before we started Island Padel there were two courts here but they weren’t being utilised at all. Even now, we have a lot of tennis courts around the Island just sitting there.’
The independent petition, lodged by Islander Daniel Galloway and which is open until March 2023, said: ‘At present there are no padel courts in the west of the Island and I would like to request a publicly-funded facility to be made available to the public.
‘The development in St Clement has shown it is an increasingly popular sport. It requires little space and is inexpensive in comparison to many other sports. The development of a padel court in the west of the island would be a great way of encouraging more people to become more active.’
