Padel, indoor golf and new leisure uses: E(d) or sui generis

An indoor padel court sits in Class E(d) of the Use Classes Order. Put the same courts outside and they leave Class E completely. Add a bar that people visit for its own sake and the whole operation can become sui generis. That is the padel court planning use class problem in three sentences, and it applies equally to indoor golf simulators, climbing centres and the rest of the competitive socialising sector.

The class matters because it decides whether you need planning permission at all, and because a description of development that gets it wrong produces a permission you cannot rely on.

What Class E(d) actually covers

Class E(d) of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, as amended in 2020, covers use "for indoor sport, recreation or fitness, not involving motorised vehicles or firearms, principally to visiting members of the public".

Read the qualifications rather than the headline. Indoor is the first. Motorised vehicles and firearms are excluded, so indoor karting and a shooting range are sui generis. And the use must be principally for visiting members of the public, which is the limb operators of private clubs most often miss. A facility available only to a closed membership, with no public booking route, has an arguable case for sitting outside E(d) altogether.

Because movement within a use class is not development, a lawful Class E unit can become an indoor padel or simulator venue without a planning application. A former shop in Class E(a), an office in E(g)(i) or a restaurant in E(b) can all make that change in principle. Physical works, plant, signage and any external alteration are separate matters that need their own permission.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it, and remember that a lawful development certificate under section 191 or 192 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is the only formal way to confirm that a use is lawful.

Indoor courts and outdoor courts are in different classes

Class E has no outdoor sport limb. An area or place for outdoor sport or recreation, again excluding motorised vehicles and firearms, sits in Class F2(c), within the local community class, and an outdoor swimming pool or skating rink in F2(d).

So a scheme with four indoor courts and two outdoor courts is a mixed use spanning two classes, and the outdoor element needs planning permission in its own right. Canopies and partial enclosures blur the line, and the honest test is whether the court is within a building. A tensile structure over a court, fully enclosed and heated, is indoor. A perimeter wall with an open roof falls outside.

Councils treat the two very differently on amenity grounds, which is the real reason the distinction matters. Outdoor courts near housing bring noise and lighting into play at once, and an application that treats the outdoor courts as an afterthought to the indoor building tends to be refused on the outdoor element alone.

Noise from racquet sports

Padel is an impulsive noise source. The ball strike carries a sharp onset with energy in the mid and upper frequencies, the glass walls add their own impact, and players shout. Measured average levels look modest while the individual events are what neighbours hear, particularly after dark when background levels fall away.

Because a commercial padel club is a commercial operation, BS 4142:2014+A1:2019 is normally the right framework, with acoustic feature corrections applied for impulsivity and for intermittency. A noise impact assessment built only on the rating level misses the point, so ask the acoustician for three things:

1. Measured background sound levels at the nearest sensitive façades, in the evening and at night as well as during the day.
2. Predicted rating levels with the impulsivity correction stated and justified, court by court.
3. Maximum levels for individual ball strikes at the nearest bedroom windows, assessed against recognised guidance on sleep disturbance.

Mitigation that works tends to be a combination of acoustic barriers of stated mass per unit area, court orientation, and a curfew. Barriers have to break the line of sight to the source, which for a ball struck at shoulder height means real height rather than a 2 m fence. Agree the method with the environmental health team first, because the corrections are where the argument happens.

Indoor venues have a different problem: structure-borne noise and plant. An indoor court in a steel-framed unit transmits impact through the slab, and the ventilation and cooling plant needed for a warm hall runs all evening.

Floodlighting and curfews

Outdoor courts need light to be usable in winter, and floodlighting on a site near housing is a standard refusal reason. The assessment framework is the Institution of Lighting Professionals guidance on obtrusive light, which sets limits for vertical illuminance at windows, luminous intensity of luminaires and upward light ratio by environmental zone, with tighter figures after a stated curfew.

A lighting assessment should state the environmental zone it has assumed and justify it, because the difference between a suburban and a rural zone changes every limit. Then it should show isolux contours at the nearest windows, the mounting heights, the tilt angles, the optic types and the control regime.

Offer the curfew yourself. A condition switching the courts and the lighting off at a set time, with no override, is easier to accept than a promise of good management. Councils will often accept later use on the indoor courts than the outdoor ones, which is a sensible split to propose.

Converting an industrial unit

Industrial and storage units are attractive for padel and simulator venues because of the clear height and the low rent per square metre. The planning position is less convenient. Class B2 general industrial and Class B8 storage and distribution are outside Class E, so the change of use needs a full planning application.

Expect three policy arguments. Loss of employment floorspace, which most adopted local plans protect, and which may need evidence on marketing and on the supply of alternative units. Access and parking, because an evening leisure use has a completely different trip profile from a daytime warehouse and often shares an estate road with HGV movements. And amenity, where the estate abuts housing.

A transport statement is normally proportionate, and it needs to be built on evening and weekend peaks rather than the morning peak the estate was designed around. Court bookings give you a usable arrival profile: a 90-minute booking cycle with four players per court produces a predictable surge every hour and a half.

Ancillary bars, membership and hours

A bar that serves players before and after a game is ancillary to the sports use and needs no separate permission. A bar that fills on a Friday night with people who have not booked a court is a drinking establishment, which has been sui generis since September 2020, and the mixed use then falls outside Class E.

There is no bright line, and officers look at floor area, opening hours relative to court hours, the presence of separate entrances, and how the venue markets itself. Four practical signals that a scheme has crossed over:

• Bar and lounge floorspace approaching or exceeding the activity floorspace.
• Bar opening hours extending beyond the last court booking.
• Ticketed events, live sport screenings or DJ nights advertised independently of play.
• A separate street entrance to the bar.

If the business plan depends on the bar, apply for the mixed use and describe it accurately. A permission for Class E(d) use that the council later finds operating as a bar is an enforcement problem, and conditions restricting the use or the occupier are common on this kind of consent. How those conditions work in practice is covered under conditions restricting use class or occupier.

Getting the description of development right

The description of development defines what you have permission for, and it is the hardest thing to change later. For a venue of this kind, a workable description names the use classes, the number and location of courts or bays, the indoor and outdoor split, and the ancillary elements.

Something on these lines: "Change of use of Unit 4 from Class B8 to a mixed use comprising indoor sport and recreation (Class E(d)) with six padel courts, two outdoor courts (Class F2(c)) and an ancillary bar and café, together with external alterations, plant and floodlighting."

That description tells the officer what to consult on, keeps the ancillary status of the bar on the face of the permission, and avoids an argument at discharge of conditions. The supporting planning statement should then set out the use class analysis explicitly, with the reasoning on each limb of E(d), rather than asserting a conclusion. The wider document set for a change of use is set out in the evidence pack for a change of use application.

PlanScope drafts the planning statement, noise and lighting scopes and the rest of the pack from your postcode and a short set of answers. Enter your postcode to see which reports your site is likely to need.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.