Dear David Lloyd Leisure

June 14, 2026

Dear David Lloyd Leisure,

… and your owners, the venture capital fund: TDR Capital Titan,

Please answer these questions.

Is it true that you are planning a big expansion, allowing you to value the group, including David Lloyd Beckenham, at £2 billion?

Does the expansion include recruiting thousands of new members for the Beckenham club, many already on a waiting list?

Do you want more and more people to use the David Lloyd Beckenham ‘business hub’ rather than working from home, or local cafés, bars and restaurants?

Is the aim to get these people to stay all day long so that they buy more food and drink at your clubs, rather than supporting local businesses?

Are you also trying to increase ‘dwell time’, meaning more members coming early, staying late, and (again) spending more on food and drink?

Won’t the expansion of your ‘spa retreat’ experience, also bring more people in for longer and longer, requiring more and more car parking spaces?

Isn’t this the real reason you want to build a massive car park, destroying a green field in Beckenham?

Aren’t you being more than a little dishonest, when you tell the press and planning authorities that you just want to ease parking spill-over into local roads?

What next? An even bigger, multi-storey car park with hotel and restaurant?

Please feel free to contact the author (who has emailed you this letter) with the answers, and they will be published, unedited and without comment, in this forum.

Thanks for taking note of local people’s needs and opinions. That is, assuming you do respond, of course. If not, well… what does that say about the integrity of you and your venture capital owners?

On behalf of the residents of streets around the Beckenham Club, and of the rest of Bromley London Borough (described as: “London’s Green Borough”).

~ O ~ o ~

If you would like further details on these proposals, please feel free to read the following articles, some in verse.

A lyrical take on the plan to build a big car park on a green space at a sports and health club in Beckenham. It used to be used for football and other games, before a previous (unsuccessful) bid to expand the (already big) car park, was opposed by Sport England. Planning rules require Sport England to be asked to comment if there is a plan to cease using a field for sporting purposes.

Read: What price green space?

Which would you rather see when you look out of your bedroom window: a green field or a car park? If you check out the following video, with the sound turned on, you will get to see what the green space looks like, and sounds like, now, before the bulldozers are sent in. There is already a big leisure centre and car park. The building at the back of the green space houses the swimming pool and other facilities. It is a valuable local resource that has been carefully planned with a green buffer to protect residents from noise and pollution from the cars that come and go during the day and evening until 10.00 pm. If you look carefully, you will see the car park to the left of the frame, behind the hedge and about a meter below the level of the grass lawn.

Directly in front of the green is a local residential street that has no other commercial buildings, just pleasant, suburban houses, and another green space that is open to sports and leisure users. Many children walk along this street to school and, if the plan to build a huge car park goes ahead, will have to suffer increased noise and smelly pollutants from the increase in traffic and the destruction of the green buffer. How many children will suffer respiratory conditions as a response? Does David Lloyd health clubs even care? Has the local planning committee looked into the health implications for children living nearby?