Fresh start: with £130m of GLA funding behind it, work can now begin to refurbish the Crystal Palace sports centre
Bromley Council last night granted planning permission for a £130million refurbishment of the long-neglected sports centre at Crystal Palace, with plans backed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan that are to be funded by the Greater London Authority.
Councillors on Bromley’s planning committee voted unanimously in favour of the scheme.
The former National Sports Centre’s 50-metre swimming pool and diving pool have been dry for six years, since structural cracks were discovered in the Grade II*-listed building.
The athletics stadium, which was supposed to serve as a legacy centre for track and field after the 2012 Olympics, had been allowed to become overgrown and decayed since the London Games. The all-weather track was worn out, the indoor training hall regularly flooded, concrete in the stands was crumbling and even the floodlight pylons needed to be removed because they were in danger of collapsing.
The proposed redevelopment will include a 25,000-seat athletics stadium – up from the previous 17,000 capacity – which would be capable of hosting elite competitions. The pools are to be repaired and reopened, and there will also be a range of community sports facilities.
Record-breakers: Steve Ovett tracks Kenya’s Henry Rono on his way to a 2-mile world best at Crystal Palace in September 1978 – one of 28 world records set at the venue
It is hoped to have the work completed by 2028.
“The regeneration of this facility is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and it’s now firmly on its way,” Liam Conlon, the Bromley MP, said this morning.
The 37-acre centre, sited within the historic Crystal Palace Park, opened as a National Sports Centre in 1964, and was managed in the early years by the Sports Council. It provided the country’s first all-weather athletics track, and was the home of British athletics for more than 40 years.
Work on the site is due to begin soon, with Morgan Sindall appointed to carry out the works by the GLA. FaulknerBrowns is the project architect, while WOO Architects prepared the sports masterplan.
The approved work includes structural alterations to return the 50-metre competition pool and diving pool to use, according to Construction News. “The aquatics hall will accommodate shallow water, 25-metre swimming, 50-metre competition swimming and diving within one area.
Splashing the cash: after six years standing dry, the pools at Crystal Palace will now undergo significant repairs
“Morgan Sindall will also upgrade changing facilities, install new lifts and refurbish the facade to improve energy efficiency. A glazed screen will separate wet and dry areas to reduce noise and humidity.”
The plans include significant improvements to previous indoor training facilities, such as a 100-metre track, a climbing centre and an enlarged gym.
External work will create a six-court padel centre, 3×3 basketball courts, five-a-side football pitches and a full-size artificial multi-sports pitch.
Public realm improvements will see better access to the nearby railway station.
The project will remove the building’s old gas systems and introduce air source heat pumps and rooftop photovoltaic panels. The GLA says the work will cut the centre’s carbon emissions by 98%.
The GLA has been pondering over what to do with the sports centre for 15 years, from then Mayor Boris Johnson’s dodgy idea of selling it to a Chinese billionaire, to later, more tempered considerations of repairs and modest upgrades.
Then came covid, and the shock discovery of the serious structural issues with the pools which forced a significant re-think.
Delivery: London Mayor Sadiq Khan
The plans have the support of at least 15 sports national governing bodies, as well as Historic England, which praised the proposals for making the centre “fit for the future”.
Mayor Khan said: “This historic and much-loved national sports facility has created so many UK sporting stars, but it needs major investment and refurbishment and I am committed to delivering this.
“We now look forward to starting the next phase of work alongside partners and the local community to create an outstanding sporting venue, as we work together to build a better London for everyone.”
The sports project follows the £18million overhaul of the surrounding Crystal Palace Park, which last weekend celebrated the completion of its works, including the renovation of its world-famous Victorian dinosaur statues.
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The Mayor of London and the GLA have done excellent work on this project.
Bromley Council should be congratulated on granting planning permission for this GLA funded substantial investment to restore and upgrade the sports facilities in Crystal Palace Park.
However, this is in stark contrast to Bromley Council’s outline approval, in December 2008, to the LDA (London Development Agency) ‘Masterplan’, which would have severely reduced the highly-valued existing community sports provision in the park. In essence, it proposed ripping out the swimming pools, diving pool, multi-use undoor sports hall and squash courts from the National Sports Centre building, for it to be used only as an indoor unheated five-a-side football centre. The athletics stadium was to be downgraded for local use only with considerably reduced seating capacity, rendering it incapable of holding major athletics meetings. The indoor running track would have been lost, along with the floodlit synthetic turf pitches.
For these reasons, Sport England (statutory consultee on the loss of playing fields and safeguarding sports provision) strongly objected to the planning application. The Secretary of State called it in for a public inquiry. The inspector’s report recommended that there should be no loss of the existing sports facilities before a replacement regional sports centre was established elsewhere in the park. This scheme is therefore a most welcome outcome.
Bromley’s time in charge of both Crystal Palace Park and the sports centre – since Thatcher abolished the GLC and lumbered the borough with the responsibilities – has been an unmitigated disaster, for Crystal Palace, for London and for the nation.
Another damaging example of Thatcherism which has taken many years, and many millions, to unravel.
A great first step. But it will need major events to thrive. Will the politicians now begin their lobbying to bring big competitions (e.g. Diamond League) to South London?
I’m not sure they necessarily deserve it, but to be fair to the fascist borough of Bromley, they did get stuck with a national asset in the form of Crystal Palace Park and the National Sports Centre in their patch, when the wicked witch of Thatcherism killed the GLC. Of course, five boroughs meet at Crystal Palace, but when Bromley looked for some of the other boroughs to help with funding that national asset, local government “slopey shoulder” syndrome was in full effect and the other boroughs ALL said “It is in your borough, you sort it out.”