Padel - how noisy is it?

[dragonscannotswim]

Does anyone play padel? How noisy is it?

The tennis next door to us want to add a padel court, and I'm concerned about noise pollution.

😆

I think it can be quite noisy.

In my home country, padel became extremly popular during the pandemic, and there were some conflicts between new outdoor padel courts and their neighbours, because of the noise, especially since people were playing on the courts very late in the evenings.

I am not sure it’s much noisier than tennis. The racquet is not string and there is some thud but quite low, but I play a lot and might be biased!
Of course though there will be more people on the court and more in the club so from this point of view would be noisier.

Same as squash or tennis

Anyone else?

My research shows that it's much noisier than tennis - about 20dB noisier.

I would say it is noisier because you are hitting the walls as well as just hitting the ball over the net.

It is noisier. There’s a thud when the ball bounces off the walls, but also the walls make it echoey.

Is this a planning application? If so, and you think there will be a real loss of amenity if it goes ahead, fight with everything at your disposal as soon as possible. Get local councillors on board. Get a local petition going. Go through the application with a fine tooth comb and see what they claim about light, noise, parking, operating hours. Do all this then throw it in the bin, because if your council is like ours, they will build the (in our case) outdoor 5 a side pitches anyway and sidestep the whole planning process, building them, not as far as possible from existing housing, but as close as possible. Goodbye to our summer evenings and weekends.

Excuse the bitterness! I'm sure your coucil is better than this. More seriously, if you don't question it now, they will plough ahead and then you will never get the noise (or whatever) subsequently reduced.

Shit, @CallThatCloudy, I'm really sorry to hear that.

Yes, the tennis club has not applied for planning permission yet. We will object strongly!

you are very very very unlikely to be successful

Why do you say that, @greenbeansrock ?? The whole point of applying for planning permission is so the council can assess whether a project is suitable for the area and that residents won't be affected by it.

We stayed in a hotel with a padel court and I was surprised by how loud it was. It sounded more like squash than tennis with the noise of the ball on the walls. I don't know if it's the demographic it attracts, but people were playing at 7am.

I how you get your council to take it seriously and at least put sensible timings on the consent.

It is significantly noisier than tennis as it is more of a gunshot sound. The rallies are much longer as well, and there is much more verbal interaction than in a normal tennis game. If you are within 100m of a padel court, you certainly know about it. People keep saying it is the fastest growing sport - well tennis is not growing at the same speed, because it is already a massive sport! Padel courts are smaller than tennis courts so the club will be able to make more money from it. In Sweden, during covid they opened up 100s of padel courts. Now these courts are hardly used and many are turned into logistic storage depots. Do your best to stop the introduction of padel courts if they are near residential areas.

Much louder….
Enclosed echo chamber court
4 people (per court)
Bounces off walls
solid racquet

I think it's much louder than tennis. It's when it bounces off the walls, don't get that in tennis!

As an example of the kind of nonsense we had: proposal for the pitches included statements about floodlights being shielded and noise being kept below defined levels. Pitches were then built (despite objections). Sure enough, light and noise hugely intrusive, measurably higher than stated in the plans. Took complaints to environmental health, to be told that details in plans were "guidelines", not enforceable, so no regulations broken. The proposal didn't go though the formal coucil planning process because the development "wasn't considered to impact the local surroundings". An absolute, total stitch up.

When the tories were talking about relaxing planning applications my heart fell into my boots, its just going to get worse and worse.

Our local tennis club had a fight to get flood lights installed. Part of the planning approval was that they were not to be used after 9pm so that the neighbours were not disturbed by noise of lights. I think that is quite usual, to have restrictions applied.

The tennis club is stating till 10pm Mon-Fri

Lights aren't noisy!

The club has lights installed. They were there when we moved in so we're fine with that.

Padel is quite noisy. And planning permission is definitely not guaranteed – I know personally of 2 tennis clubs near me who were told they wouldn't get planning permission for padel courts as they were surrounded by houses. I think this is key @dragonscannotswim, there need to be a number of residential properties on several sides of the club, then you have a decent chance of objecting; if it's just you, you're much less likely to be successful.

@CallThatCloudy's experience sounds shit, but it sounds as if that was a council-backed plan. A private tennis club is much less obviously of general community benefit and therefore the bar for planning permission is likely to be higher.

We will talk to all our neighbours!!