For a town this size, Bury St Edmunds has built one of the more interesting padel stories in East Anglia. Suffolk’s first permanent courts opened here in September 2023, a second venue followed, and there are now two more proposals working their way through planning – enough live and pending courts that West Suffolk is starting to look like a padel county with a single active town at its centre.

There’s also a local dispute worth knowing about before you read too much into any “coming soon” claim: a padel proposal at Victory Sports Ground has put an 80-year-old tennis club’s future in question, and it’s still unresolved. More on that below.

Risbygate Sports Club: where it started

Risbygate Sports Club, on Westley Road, brought padel to Bury St Edmunds first, opening two courts in September 2023 – the town’s, and Suffolk’s, introduction to the sport. The courts are all-weather and open to non-members as well as club members, which matters if you don’t fancy a membership just to try padel for the first time.

Court hire runs £40 an hour for non-members and £20 for members, booked in 90-minute slots. Risbygate also runs Americano social sessions – the round-robin format that mixes partners each game – at £10 a head for non-members and £5 for members, plus coaching for players from complete beginner through to advanced. Rackets and balls are free to borrow, so there’s no excuse to skip a first session because you don’t own kit yet.

David Lloyd Bury St Edmunds: the other option

David Lloyd’s Sandlands Drive club runs three outdoor padel courts, bookable through the David Lloyd app in the same doubles-only, 60-to-90-minute format the chain uses nationally. Access follows the standard David Lloyd model: members book directly, and non-members can play as a guest of a member with a valid guest pass declared at reception.

The courts themselves went through a small planning update earlier this year – West Suffolk Council approved a lighter-weight cover for the court structures, a minor amendment to existing permission, not a new build. It explains why the courts were briefly closed for works. It doesn’t change how you book a game there.

Two more venues in the pipeline

Two separate planning applications would roughly double the town’s padel provision if both go ahead, though neither has been approved as of this piece being published.

Bury St Edmunds Rugby Club, on Southgate Green, has an application lodged by RX3 Padel BSE Ltd for four covered courts plus a single-storey clubhouse with a reception, shop, bar and social area. The site sits behind the club’s training pitch, which already has floodlighting, and the proposal includes a 32-space car park. If approved, this would be the biggest single padel development the town has seen.

Culford School, a few miles north of the town centre at Culford Park, has applied to build two indoor courts in partnership with SN Padel Limited, with a public sports club element alongside the school’s own use. Because Culford Hall is a listed building, the application needs separate listed building consent as well as standard planning permission – a slower process than a straightforward new-build site, so don’t expect fast movement here even if it’s eventually approved.

The Victory Ground dispute: a live, unresolved story

One more padel story is playing out in Bury St Edmunds, and it’s worth flagging with more care than the others because it isn’t really about new padel courts – it’s about whether an existing tennis club survives.

Victory Ground Tennis Players, a club with around 170 members that has used the Victory Sports Ground Complex for decades, rents its two courts from Victory Sports Ground CIC. The CIC has said it’s had interest from other parties in the same space, including an offer to convert the courts to padel worth roughly £25,000 a year against the tennis club’s current £4,000 rent. The tennis club has offered to pay more, but says it can’t match that figure.

As of this piece being published, no decision has been made. The CIC says it’s waiting for the tennis club to come back to the table with a fuller offer; the tennis club disputes exactly what’s been offered and by whom. Sport England and the LTA have both been drawn into the debate, with Sport England reportedly raising separate concerns about the loss of five-a-side football provision on the same site. This one is unresolved – treat any claim that padel courts are “replacing” Victory Ground as premature until West Suffolk Council or the parties involved confirm an outcome.

A lot of padel for a small town

Put the live venues and the pipeline together and West Suffolk starts to look disproportionately well served for its population. Two operating venues, two schemes in planning, and a live debate over whether a third site converts an existing tennis facility – that’s a fair amount of padel activity for a market town of around 45,000 people, closer to the density you’d expect from a larger regional centre than a rural county town.

It also means Bury St Edmunds compares well to bigger neighbours. Padel in Cambridge has more courts overall, as you’d expect from a much larger city, but Bury St Edmunds is arguably moving faster relative to its size – four courts at the rugby club alone would be a meaningful jump for a town this compact. Padel in Ipswich, the county town, gives a sense of what a fuller Suffolk picture looks like once you add the coast and the A14 corridor into the mix.

Picking up a racket in Suffolk

Right now, your practical choices are Risbygate for a pay-and-play first session or a beginner course, and David Lloyd if you’re already a member or know one who can bring you as a guest. Both are within a few minutes of the town centre, so it’s worth trying both before deciding where to commit if you’re new to the sport.

If either the rugby club or Culford School scheme goes ahead, Bury St Edmunds moves from a town with a couple of padel courts to a town with a proper padel scene – four more courts at one site alone would nearly triple current capacity.

Whichever way the Victory Ground situation resolves, it’s a reminder that padel’s growth in towns like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it competes for the same land, budgets and community goodwill as the sports that were there first. Worth keeping in mind next time a “new padel courts” headline lands without the fuller story attached.

See how this compares elsewhere with the full directory of UK padel court guides, organised by region.