Tottenham Hotspur’s plans to expand its training center to include resources for its women’s team and academy have put the club at odds with environmental groups in north London.
A report in the Guardian details how the former Whitewebbs golf course built on land owned by the Enfield Council was closed in 2019 after the Council decided to sell off part of the land. In the ensuing five years what used to be fairways, greens, and sand traps has been “rewilded,” essentially left to lie fallow while nature reclaims the area. The result is 240 acres of what is now habitats for a wide variety of native UK animals, insects, and birds, including “35 species of bees and wasps” and “the only confirmed sandpit mining bee nest in north London.” The area has become popular with visitors and others who travel there to reconnect to nature, something increasingly difficult in London and the surrounding areas.
However, that land lies adjacent to Tottenham Hotspur’s Hotspur Way training center, and the club has now leased part of that land to develop into new training grounds for Spurs Women and a women and girls’ academy, plans which has put it at odds with environmentalists and those who want this rare stretch of nature left alone. Local environmental activists and groups have spent significant time over the past years not only observing the wildlife reclaiming the Whitewebbs site, but also logging it and giving tours to interested members of the public. For them, taking rewilded land and turning it into pool-cue flat and cultivated football training pitches is the exact opposite of environmental stewardship. One environmental group, the “Friends of Whitewebbs,” is currently suing Enfield Council over the matter and a hearing about the lease of land to Spurs will be held soon.
It’s an interesting conundrum, and the environmental stewards are not at all wrong. It takes a great deal of effort, money, and presumably chemicals to keep a football pitch in top condition, much less a complex Premier League tier football training center with 15 of them in a small area. That said, the leasing and redevelopment of the leased Whitewebbs land is part of the clubs’ new commitment to developing women’s football in north London, something that we on this site have been calling for a long time.
We all want the club to invest more in Spurs Women, and this is one way they can do that. It was only a couple of years ago when Alex Morgan joined Spurs Women on loan only to reveal that the team only trained at the top-notch facilities at Hotspur Way once a week. Things are now improving in that regard, but this is now one of those rare situations where environmental concerns and social justice concerns butt up against each other in the worst way.
The club, as stated in the article, says that it plans to “plant trees and develop a ‘biodiversity corridor’ on the land” as part of its development process for the area. That’s a neat idea, but short on details, and I suspect those individuals and groups hoping to keep a small patch of wild landscape alive inside one of the biggest cities in Europe won’t be mollified too much by Spurs’ statement.
The article is written in a way that is very sympathetic to the environmental groups expressing concerns about the land use, which is fair. Tottenham Hotspur is one of the richest clubs in world football and it makes a certain amount of sense to frame a football club, even ours, as a corporate behemoth trying to bulldoze nature into submission for sport.
They’re even right about that! I’m also sympathetic to the idea that my club developing and supporting women’s football puts it in conflict with other things I care about, specifically nature and environmental issues. it’s not a fun thing to grapple with. All that said, I suspect the club is also sympathetic to the environmental impact, and likely there will be some sort of compromise where Spurs can preserve what land it can as part of the development project, or donate funds to the preservation of wildlife in other parts of London. In the meantime, the upcoming hearing may provide more information about what land can or can’t be used, and how it could be developed.