Welcome to the home page of our community benefit society. We will be adding information to this all the time so make sure you keep checking back.
The pledge total of £106,163.60 is made up of £30k from the NPRA | Resident pledges £64,054 | Gift Aid £12,109.60 | 186 pledges averaging £405.13 per pledge
Last update: 07:46 – 11 June 2025
Make your donation pledge now
To help us judge the level of support we have, we would be grateful if you would fill out the below form with how much money you are prepared to pledge. No money changes hands at this stage, and this is not a final commitment on your part. More financial information and details of the proposals will be provided in due course.
A brief history of The Bowl and how we got to this point
The ‘Park Bowl’ was gifted to the NLTA in 1953 under the terms of a covenant still in place today restricting its use to sporting and recreational use, initially to compensate the people of Nottingham for losing their deer park.
Since then the sites that make up this area of land have been leased to various organisations, and for many years now we’ve had 2 tennis clubs, one at either end, and until 2010, the EBA on the central site, which is now for sale.
The NPRA tried to agree a rental of £5000pa for this central site in 2011 and raised our fees to £25 to allow us to do this but we lost out to Active Ace, a tennis coaching company in 2014. They finally went bankrupt and left in 2020, but we did manage to get both the pavilion and the ‘tea room’ renovated during this period with a loan from the LTA.
In 2016 they had successfully applied for planning permission for 3 padel tennis courts without floodlighting on part of their site and got it through almost unnoticed, but never progressed the building of them.
In 2023 another attempt was made by the NLTA to apply for 5 floodlit courts across the whole site but by now the understanding of what this would mean for Park residents was better understood and the resistance was so strong it was eventually dropped.
Meanwhile, the NSRC (Nottingham Squash Racquets Club have also been through difficult times. Their site on the other side of Tattershall Drive is also covered by the same covenant. The unused ‘scrub land’ (an old tennis court) was bought by them in the1990s for £44k on a 999 year lease, on the understanding that if the covenant is broken the land reverts to the NLTA, which is similar to the offer we’ve now been made. Whilst they are past the worst of their financial woes the club is still being run and managed by volunteers and they are looking for a route to a more sustainable future.
Because of these challenges, the NPRA decided in 2024 to add another layer of protection to The Bowl by submitting an ACV (Asset of Community Value) application to Nottingham City Council which was accepted. All this does is prevent a quick sale of the land by giving us as a community a six month window to raise the funds necessary to match the asking price. It does not give us any preferential status above this.
In January 2025 that ACV was triggered by the NLTA putting part of the old Active Ace site – minus the three hard courts – up for sale at an asking price of £300k, and our six month window runs out on July 6th.
An explanation of the slightly complex proposal and why it has come about
The problem lies with the NLTA’s £300k valuation, which is not based on any reasonable evidence. By their own admission, the site as a whole is worth 20x its rentable value, which is a generous calculation, but based on all past and current rental incomes, would suggest the whole of the Bowl would be at most worth £360k.
But – the NLTA say they have a guaranteed buying willing to pay £300k for the site on July 6th once the ACV period comes to an end. We don’t know if this is true or what they intend to do on the site, but if true, the site will be owned by an external company who will put making a profit on that purchase above our needs or concerns.
We cannot raise money to purchase the site based on a spurious valuation, so we need to get an independent valuation before we can fully launch our campaign, but if that comes in lower than £300k, which it undoubtably will, the NLTA will not sell us the site.
So – we need to break this stalemate, which has been blocking us gaining access to the land at the centre of our community for decades. The approach we took was to broaden out the scope of what we’re trying to achieve to encompass all the parties who have an interest in The Bowl, which includes the three Park bodies, the NPRA, the NPEL, the NPCT (Conservation Trust), and the three sports clubs, the NSRC, the CTC (Castle Tennis Club) and the PTC (Park Tennis Club).
There is now a possible solution that all parties could sign up to if we can agree the detail, but we’re not there yet. The deal is that we agree to raise the £300k asking price, but we will also agree that the independent valuation of the site that we get will be honoured and that the difference between that and the £300k will be used by the NLTA to go towards building indoor padel tennis courts, potentially on the NSRC site.
The benefits in this are widespread. We get the central bowl site for our community to use as we decide, plus a new sporting offer, the NLTA gets Padel Tennis which is a known income generator, the NSRC get an alternative solution to consider other than attempting to develop the site for housing, and the covenant on the whole of the Bowl is protected against further challenges.
The devil as always is in the detail, and there’s a lot of detail yet to be agreed. We need to test the proposal with the planning department, although this is not seen to be at all contentious, we need to get a more accurate build cost to work with alongside the valuation for the site to understand what percentage of two courts we’d be financing. And then based on that we need to agree the ownership and profit share after running and maintenance costs have been deducted.
If we can reach a consensus on all of that, and all parties can agree on something that works for them, we will be in a position to proceed with our fundraising campaign – but we also need to start now, so this is our proposal for that.
The fundraising process with a timeline for what we need to achieve by when.
Deadlines focus attention and we need all the parties to see this as an opportunity that is time limited. That includes all Park residents recognising that without their support, even with an agreement in place this will achieve nothing.
Until that agreement is in place, we need to be raising awareness and getting pledges of support to strengthen the case for a collaborative solution that could benefit everyone. Our aim is to get that agreement by the end of the month at which point we will be converting the pledges to donations and from that point on collecting donations only. Pledges will only be converted if those who have pledged agree to the terms reached between all the parties.
The vehicle for this is a CBS (Community Benefit Society) that will operate the fundraising campaign through selling shares to residents and club members for one pound each, representing one vote on anything we then decide once the site has been purchased. Additional shares can also be purchased but without conferring any greater influence over future decisions. Directors of the CBS will be from the NPRA and the three sports clubs. The fundraising itself however will not be done through the CBS but through the NPCT so that we can apply for gift aid on all the donations. If we fail to reach the target, the funds donated will be returned on request.
We could reach our target by getting every resident to donate £100, and whilst that won’t happen, it’s a useful measure of the challenge ahead. With the three clubs we have already extended our reach, and could extend this further if necessary by offering shares to ex residents or friends of residents who want to donate. The NPRA have committed to donating £30k, 10% of the total, from its ‘warchest’ to start the process.
The main challenge now is reaching the rest of the Park’s residents who need to understand this proposition, see a benefit to them in it, and decide to donate at least £100 but in some cases considerably more. Different people will have different motivators, and it is important that we both use those motivators, but also make it clear that no decisions will be taken until after the purchase is made, and then on the basis of what the majority of shareholders want to see happen.
The only caveat we would apply at this stage is that nothing will be promoted that would be seen as unreasonably disruptive to those living around the perimeter of the Bowl. If you lived there, would you be happy with your proposed use of the site? One of the key requirements for this is that all access will be for members only. We’re not restricting membership, just recognising the need to know who is using what and when, and receive an income from membership fees based on what each resident decides they want to pay for from a collective offering operating under the CBS banner.
The Community Benefit Society Structure
We are forming a company in which Park residents can invest by buying shares. The primary objective of the company is to purchase the old EBC bowling area and the tea room for the benefit of the community, and in the longer term, if there is any surplus, to use this for the benefit of the wider community of The Park. The company itself will be a Community Benefit Society and will be registered with, and regulated by, the Financial Conduct Authority.
Anyone who invests the minimum of £1. which will be the price of single share, will have a vote and therefore a say in the affairs of the business at General Meetings, and it is the intention that there will be a committee of members to oversee the day-to-day running of the business. Of course, we welcome bigger share holdings (legal maximum is £100,000) but the business will operate strictly on a one member, one vote basis, regardless of how many shares you hold.
The Company will not pay dividends to shareholders but you may be able to recoup your initial investment in the future by selling your shares back to the Company. To give the business a chance to establish itself we will need to agree an initial period of five years during which time the buying back of shares will be restricted, but thereafter the expectation is that there may be profits to fund withdrawals within parameters agreed by the members.