Plans for a new padel and pickleball centre, offices and fitness facilities near Queens Drive are being recommended for approval despite departing from Nottingham’s adopted planning policies.
Nottingham City Council’s Planning Committee will consider the application for the former car park behind Riverleen House, off Centurion Way, at its meeting on Wednesday 22 July.
The proposed development would include an indoor padel centre, covered outdoor padel and pickleball courts, a café and bar, a Pilates studio, personal training rooms and a separate two-storey office building.
Planning officers have recommended that permission is granted subject to conditions, but councillors have not yet made a final decision.
The site is on the southern edge of the Riverside and Lenton Lane Industrial Estate, close to Queens Drive and Riverside Retail Park. It was previously used as parking for Riverleen House, a former office building which is currently being converted and extended to provide apartments.
Full planning permission and prior approval for the residential conversion were granted in 2025, and the council report says work on the building is well under way.
The main indoor padel building would be approximately 75 metres long and 37 metres wide, with a dual-pitched roof reaching about 10.5 metres at its highest point.
A separate structure containing covered outdoor courts would be approximately 50 metres long and 22.5 metres wide, with an arched roof reaching around 11.2 metres.
The proposed office building would be about 56 metres long, 10.5 metres wide and two storeys high. All of the new buildings would principally be finished in sheet metal cladding, with coloured sections proposed around parts of the padel centre.
The applicant estimates that the development would support approximately 112 full-time equivalent jobs. Around 25 would be connected with the sports, fitness and hospitality facilities, while a further 87 would be based in the proposed offices.
The application has been referred to the Planning Committee because the leisure element does not fully comply with a policy intended to protect major business parks and industrial estates for employment uses.
Council officers said the scheme had changed during the application process to include approximately 800 square metres of dedicated office space.
The report says the site’s former employment use has ended, the car park is largely redundant and the proposed development would not result in the loss of an active industrial or strategically important employment operation.
Officers concluded that the new offices, number of proposed jobs and reuse of previously developed land outweighed the limited conflict with the policy.
Because sports, fitness and hospitality facilities are classed as main town centre uses for planning purposes, the applicant was also required to show that there were no suitable alternative sites in more central locations.
The council’s planning policy team accepted that no suitable or available preferable sites had been identified within the relevant catchment area. It also concluded that the development would not have a significant adverse effect on existing city, town, district or local centres.
Approximately 69 parking spaces would be provided. The council’s highways team has raised no objection, citing the site’s proximity to public transport and additional parking available at the nearby retail park.
The report says the courts would be booked in advance, which is expected to spread arrivals and departures throughout the day rather than produce concentrated periods of traffic.
Conditions proposed by officers would prevent the indoor padel centre and offices from operating outside 06:00 to 22:00 on any day.
The external padel and pickleball courts, outdoor spectator areas and external bar areas would be restricted to operating between 08:00 and 20:00.
Noise has been considered because apartments are being created within the neighbouring Riverleen House.
The proposed office building would stand between the flats and the padel centre, providing some screening. The report says there would be approximately 20 metres between the flats and the new offices, with the main padel building a further 12 metres away. The open-sided outdoor courts would be around 70 metres from the apartments.
The council’s pollution control officers have raised no objection, subject to the padel centre operator and office occupiers preparing noise management plans.
These would cover noise from activities, equipment, ventilation systems, deliveries and collections, as well as arrangements for investigating complaints from nearby residents.
The site lies within Flood Zone 2, but officers said its proposed leisure and commercial uses are considered appropriate in that location. Much of the former car park is already covered by impermeable hardstanding.
The Lead Local Flood Authority has raised no objection, although detailed surface water drainage arrangements would have to be approved before construction began.
A significant proportion of the trees on the site would be removed. The council’s tree officer described them as having low to moderate arboricultural value and requested a detailed landscaping scheme to secure replacement planting.
The development would initially produce a deficit of 2.48 habitat units. A planning condition would therefore require the applicant to demonstrate how a minimum biodiversity net gain of 10 per cent would be achieved.
This could include habitat improvements on the site, registered off-site biodiversity units or the purchase of statutory biodiversity credits. The habitats would have to be managed and monitored for at least 30 years.
Solar panels are proposed on available sections of the padel centre and office roofs, while the buildings would be designed using a “fabric first” approach intended to reduce energy demand.
No objections were received from the nine neighbouring properties consulted. Council officers responsible for highways, biodiversity, trees, pollution control, flood risk and carbon reduction have also raised no objections, subject to conditions.
If councillors approve the application, detailed drainage, biodiversity, landscaping, construction traffic and travel plans would still have to be submitted and agreed. Parking, servicing and highway works would also have to be completed before the development could open.
