Trentham Padel: Master Financial Model and Break-Even Analysis

Project: Six-court indoor padel venue, Trentham/Stoke-on-Trent area Purpose: Integrate the six validated workstreams into one capital requirement, one annual operating case per scenario, and one break-even test Evidence date: 7 August 2026 Currency: GBP, excluding VAT unless stated Status: Built after the originating research session (Manus) exhausted its credits mid-way through this exact document. It had reached "capital, operating, statutory-charge, technology and staffing cost models" as its in-progress task and left an unexecuted, self-truncated build script (build_master_financial_model.py, recovered separately) containing only draft global assumptions, never run and never validated. This document does not reuse that script's court-revenue placeholders. Every figure below is either (a) pulled directly from the four validated, checksum-passed workbooks (01/07/08/09), or (b) a new calculation performed on top of those figures and shown in full, or (c) explicitly marked as an open item requiring a primary quote.

Decision in one sentence: on the validated cost base alone, the hybrid operating model is financeable at realistic padel utilisation (34–62% of theoretical court capacity, depending on which sourced hourly rate is used); the traditional staffed model requires 66–120% utilisation at the same rates and is not viable unless court pricing or ancillary income rises materially above the sourced benchmarks; court-booking revenue itself was never modelled by the originating research session and is the single most important gap in this pack — commission live Playtomic/competitor slot-sampling (per doc 02's own recommendation) before committing capital.

1. What this document adds

Four of the pack's modules (01 vending, 07 environmental/utilities, 08 hospitality/retail, 09 staffing) each carry their own decision summary, capex, and — where relevant — a scenario P&L. None of them, individually or together, answer the question an investment committee actually asks: what is the total cash requirement, and what has to happen commercially for the venue to pay for itself? This document performs that integration. It does not re-derive or restate the four source models' own working — see each document for its full evidence and sensitivity ranges.

What is deliberately excluded, and why: - Court-booking revenue. No document in this pack models it with sourced demand or utilisation. Doc 02 explicitly states that competitor utilisation "should be tested against... live booking-slot sampling," not assumed, and doc 09's own cost model notes make the same point about staffing sensitivity to actual usage. Section 5 below inverts the problem instead: it calculates the utilisation the venue would need at known, sourced hourly rates to cover its known, sourced costs. - Rent, rates multiplier and SDLT. No validated rent figure for a specific Trentham-area unit was recovered from this pack's research. Doc 07's business-rates figures assume a rateable value that its own text flags as unconfirmed pending VOA assessment. Rent, therefore, is not in the capital or operating totals below — see Section 6. - Financing cost, tax and depreciation. Consistent with every source module, all figures are pre-financing, pre-tax operating and capital figures.

2. Integrated capital requirement

2.1 Scenario-independent base: venue, courts, life-safety, site-condition setup, vending pilot

These items do not vary by staffing model — a lean venue needs the same courts, the same fire strategy and the same water/waste connections as a traditionally staffed one.

Doc 07 also carries a £712,880 "conditional setup high" figure covering worst-case infrastructure (new substation, new sewer connection, major drainage works). That is a tail risk, not a base-case number, and is excluded here — see doc 07 §5 for the conditions that would trigger it, and confirm DNO/Severn Trent capacity before committing to a site.

2.2 Scenario-dependent: hospitality and retail fit-out

2.3 Combined installed capex before fees, contingency and rent-dependent items

Low/high here move only the scenario-independent build items (§2.1 — courts, slab, fire, environmental, vending). The hospitality/retail fit-out figure (§2.2) is held at doc 08's single published value in all three rows, because doc 08 does not itself publish a low/high hospitality band — read the range as capital-cost uncertainty on the building and site, not on the café/bar/shop fit-out.

2.4 Professional fees and master contingency — unvalidated planning assumption

No professional-fee percentage or master contingency rate was independently sourced anywhere in this pack. The figures below are recovered from Manus's own unexecuted, never-validated build script (build_master_financial_model.py), which itself labelled them "management range... replace with QS/RICS evidence." They are carried forward here, clearly flagged, on the same basis the source models use management salary and fit-out assumptions elsewhere in the pack — but unlike those figures, these specific percentages have not been checked against any external benchmark and should be treated as placeholder only.

Applying these to Section 2.3:

Confirm before commitment: at least three like-for-like written court quotations (doc 06 diligence gate), a formal fire strategy and BAFE quotation, DNO/Severn Trent capacity responses, a QS-prepared professional-fee and contingency estimate, and the VOA rateable value. Rent deposit, rent-free period and SDLT are excluded from the totals above (Section 6) pending a confirmed unit and lease.

3. Annual operating cost base by scenario

All figures below are validated model outputs, not new calculations.

4. Ancillary trading contribution

Note the counter-intuitive result already flagged in doc 08: traditional staffing does not make hospitality more profitable — its higher net-sales scenario is outweighed by its own larger cost base, producing a net loss, while hybrid is the only ancillary configuration that clears a profit.

5. What court-booking revenue would need to achieve

Required annual court revenue = fixed/staffing cost base − net ancillary contribution.

Six courts at the hospitality model's own validated opening-hours assumption (16 public hours/day, 360 days/year — doc 08 Assumptions) give a theoretical maximum capacity of 34,560 court-hours a year. No demand or utilisation figure for this exists anywhere in the pack; the table below instead shows the utilisation each scenario would need, at three sourced hourly rates, to hit the required revenue above. These are not forecasts — they are the arithmetic the pack's own hourly-rate evidence implies.

Reading this table: the lean and hybrid models clear break-even at utilisation levels that are plausible for a new indoor padel venue on any of the three sourced rates. The traditional model needs essentially full occupancy at Uttoxeter's off-peak rate — mathematically impossible within opening hours — and still needs 66% utilisation even at the higher Ace Padel Stoke rate, which was a single sampled snapshot, not a published tariff (doc 02's own caveat). This is the strongest evidence in the pack for doc 09's hybrid recommendation, and it did not exist until this document combined the four source models.

What is still missing, and is the single highest-priority next research step: actual multi-week Playtomic/competitor slot-sampling to establish a real achievable utilisation curve by day-part, exactly as doc 02 and the staffing notes both recommend and neither pack module executed. Until that exists, the utilisation percentages above are the test to apply to any commercial plan, not a substitute for one.

6. Excluded from this model — confirm before an investment committee sees a single number

7. Decision summary

1. Do not commission a full build on this pack alone. The capital and cost-base figures are validated; the revenue side is not.
2. The hybrid operating model is the only configuration with a plausible route to break-even on sourced hourly rates and validated costs — consistent with doc 09's own staffing recommendation, now confirmed independently from the revenue side.
3. The traditional staffed model fails the arithmetic test at two of three sourced rates and should not be pursued as the opening design; retain it only as the doc 09 fallback if hybrid's unmanned/remote hours prove unworkable in practice.
4. Commission live competitor slot-sampling before the next capital decision. This is now the critical path item, not planning or fit-out.
5. The £576k (lean) to £652k (hybrid) base-case capital requirement excludes rent, SDLT and working capital. Treat the true cash requirement as materially higher until a specific site is under offer.

Sources

This document performs new arithmetic on top of four already-cited source workbooks and one already-cited source document; it introduces one new primary reference.

1. Trentham_Padel_Vending_Pilot_Model.xlsx — 47/47 validation checks passed (doc 01)
2. Trentham_Environmental_Utilities_Obligation_Register.xlsx (doc 07)
3. Trentham_Hospitality_Retail_Operating_Model.xlsx (doc 08)
4. Trentham_Padel_Staffing_and_Coverage_Model.xlsx (doc 09)
5. notes/master_cost_validated_findings.md
6. notes/uttoxeter_benchmark.md — Your Padel Uttoxeter published court pricing
7. deliverables/02_Trentham_Catchment_Competition_and_Site_Screening.md §Ace Padel Stoke — Playtomic sampled pricing, 7 August 2026