A padel centre with cafe and member shop is proposed at Crabbet Park, Turners Hill. Comments close 9 October. It is Mid Sussex's 10th padel site since 2018.
A company wants to build a padel centre on land south of Crabbet Park Equestrian Centre, on Turners Hill Road in Worth parish. Mid Sussex District Council is treating it as a major development, and the deadline for comments is Friday 9 October.
The application, DM/26/2115, was received on 26 August and validated on 8 September. It is listed on the council’s register as pending consideration.
It would be the tenth site in Mid Sussex to seek planning permission for padel courts since 2018. Eight of those came in the last three years.
What is proposed
The description on the council’s planning register covers more than the courts. It is for the construction of a padel tennis facility in use class E(d), the class for indoor sport and recreation, together with:
- ancillary offices
- changing facilities and a studio
- a member shop and a cafe, all within use class E
- car and cycle parking
- bin storage
- associated access and works
The register does not say how many courts are proposed. The supporting documents are not available to the public on this portal, which returns a permission denied message on the documents tab, so the drawings, the design and access statement and any acoustic assessment cannot be read online. That is a limitation of Mid Sussex’s planning register rather than of this application, and it applies to every scheme in the district.
The applicant is Padel Centric Limited, a company incorporated on 9 October 2025 with a registered office in Watford. Companies House records its business as development of building projects and operation of sports facilities. The agent is Union4 Planning Ltd of York Road, London. The case officer is Hamish Evans.
Where this actually is
Crabbet Park sits at the very top of the district, in Worth parish and the Copthorne and Worth ward. It is on the eastern edge of Crawley rather than near any Mid Sussex town: the neighbouring buildings on the same estate, including the Holiday Inn Gatwick Worth, carry Crawley addresses and RH10 postcodes on the council’s own register.
So this is a Mid Sussex decision about a site most people in Haywards Heath or Burgess Hill will never drive past.
Two deadlines, and the later one is the one that counts
The register shows two dates, and they do not match.
- Neighbour consultation expiry: Monday 5 October 2026
- Latest advertisement expiry: Friday 9 October 2026
The second is the one in the statutory notice. Because the scheme counts as major development, the council had to advertise it in the press under article 15 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015. That notice was published on 18 September and gives 9 October as the date by which representations must be submitted in writing.
Comments go to the Interim Assistant Director of Planning and Sustainable Economy at Oaklands, Oaklands Road, Haywards Heath RH16 1SS, or through the register itself.
Ten sites in eight years
We searched the council’s register for every application mentioning padel. It returns twelve entries covering ten separate sites, because the Haywards Heath rugby club scheme has two later applications discharging its conditions.
The pattern is worth noticing. The early schemes converted something that already existed. The Triangle Leisure Centre proposed a court on a paved area at the back. East Grinstead Sports Club replaced two netball courts with four padel courts. Weald Lawn Tennis and Squash Rackets Club in Hassocks replaced an all-weather tennis court with two floodlit padel courts, and put up 3.1m acoustic fences to the south and west.
The recent ones are bigger and stand alone. Q Leisure at the Old Sand Pit on London Road, Albourne, was approved for six padel courts, a canopy, and a clubhouse with a store, pergola and outdoor seating. Gatehouse Hub at Goddards Green was approved for three outdoor courts. The Consort Way scheme in Burgess Hill is a change of use of a newly completed building from class E(g) to class E(d), which puts a padel centre inside an industrial unit.
The Crabbet Park proposal follows that second pattern, with a cafe and a member shop attached.
The one that was refused is now at appeal
Nine of the ten have been approved or are pending. One was refused.
St Francis Sports and Social Club on Colwell Road, Haywards Heath, applied in May 2025 for temporary permission, for 36 months, to change its existing tennis courts to padel courts. The council refused it on 24 February 2026. The register now records the appeal status as appeal in progress.
That appeal has not been decided. We could not reach the Planning Inspectorate’s own case record, which requires a browser session, so the council’s register is the source for the appeal status here. The refusal notice itself is among the documents the portal will not serve to the public, so the council’s reasons are not on the record we can read.
It is the only refusal in the set, and it is the one closest to housing.
What it means for you
- If you live near Crabbet Park or use Turners Hill Road, comments on DM/26/2115 must be in writing by 9 October. Quote the reference. The register’s own neighbour consultation date of 5 October is the earlier of the two, so do not leave it that late.
- If noise is your concern, the Hassocks permission is the useful precedent: it carried 3.1m acoustic fencing on two sides. Padel is played with a solid bat against glass and mesh, and it is the noise that has driven objections to these schemes elsewhere.
- If you want to play, the approvals at Albourne, Goddards Green, Burgess Hill, Cuckfield, Hassocks and East Grinstead mean the district already has permission for considerably more courts than it had two years ago.
- You can track any application through our Mid Sussex planning news page, which explains how the register and the committee system work here.
Padel Centric Limited has not published anything about the scheme that we could find, and we have not seen a statement from it. We will report the decision when the council makes one.
Sources
- Mid Sussex District Council planning register, application DM/26/2115 and the full padel search, read 22 September 2026: pa.midsussex.gov.uk
- Article 15 notice, Mid Sussex District Council, published 18 September 2026: Public Notice Portal
- Companies House record for Padel Centric Limited, company 16774266: find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
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