Trentham Padel: Red-Team Register — the Questions the Pack Does Not Answer

Prepared for: Ade Whetton Date: 7 August 2026 Status: Deliverable 13. Documents 00–12 answer the questions that were asked. This register asks the ones that were not — the questions that decide whether the venture should exist, not how to build it. Each entry states why it matters, what the pack currently establishes, and the action that closes it.

Decision in one sentence: Do not commission a single further planning document until questions 1–4 (demand evidence) and 13 (insurability of the unmanned model) are answered with real-world evidence — every one of them is capable of killing the project on its own, and none of them can be answered from a desk.

A. Demand — the pack's admitted hole

The pack models cost with discipline and revenue with arithmetic. Document 10 is explicit: court-booking demand was never evidenced anywhere. These four questions come before everything else.

1. What is the actual, observed utilisation at the nearest operating venues? Why it matters: the entire financeability verdict (hybrid needs 34–62% utilisation) rests on utilisation being plausible — a word, not a number. Pack position: none — flagged as the critical gap in documents 00 and 10. Closing action: sample Playtomic slot availability at Your Padel Uttoxeter and Ace Padel Stoke daily for 14 days, by daypart. Booked slots are public information — this costs nothing but consistency.

2. Does the Trentham catchment overlap the Uttoxeter benchmark's catchment? Why it matters: the pack uses Your Padel as a sizing benchmark. If drive-time polygons overlap materially, the benchmark is also a direct competitor, and its demand cannot simply be assumed to exist twice. Pack position: document 02 defines the catchment but never tests the overlap. Closing action: 25-minute drive-time polygons around both points; measure the shared population.

3. Who else is already coming? Why it matters: a venue that is financeable as the second operator in a catchment can be unfinanceable as the fourth. Padel is in a national build-out; the pipeline matters more than the present. Pack position: document 02 verified current competitors only. Closing action: planning-portal sweep for padel applications across Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stafford Borough and East Staffordshire, plus LTA venue-registration pipeline where visible. Repeat quarterly.

4. What happens to £26–£34/hour when local supply doubles? Why it matters: document 10's break-even utilisation is priced at today's rates. Padel court-hour pricing has no floor evidence in the pack; a price war changes every number. Pack position: rates sourced from live venues at a single point in time. Closing action: add a floor-price sensitivity case to document 10 (model at 70% of current rates) and monitor competitor pricing monthly.

5. What non-casual revenue exists, and why is none of it modelled? Why it matters: leagues, memberships, block bookings, coaching programmes, corporate events and tournaments are how real venues smooth utilisation — and none appear in the revenue model. This cuts both ways: upside not counted, but also fixed commitments not costed. Pack position: coaching cost appears in document 09; coaching revenue is explicitly unmodelled. Closing action: interview two operating venues (outside the catchment, so they will talk) on their casual-versus-committed revenue mix before believing any utilisation figure.

6. Should the design hedge multi-sport? Why it matters: the benchmark venue itself added pickleball courts. If padel demand disappoints, convertibility is the cheapest insurance available — but only if designed in before the slab and glass are ordered. Pack position: six padel courts, no flexibility analysis. Closing action: ask the court suppliers (already identified in the master cost notes) what a padel-to-pickleball conversion costs at design stage versus retrofit.

B. Money — who writes the cheque

7. Who funds the £576k–£652k, and with what security? Why it matters: the pack costs the project but never asks whether UK lenders will lend against padel courts, at what loan-to-cost, or what asset finance exists for court packages. A fundable £650k and an unfundable £650k are different projects. Closing action: three conversations — a leisure-sector broker, an asset-finance house, and the court supplier (several offer finance) — before any site commitment.

8. Will anyone in the chain demand a personal guarantee, and from whom? Why it matters: landlords of 3,000 m² units and lenders to first-time leisure operators routinely require PGs. Whoever gives one is carrying the whole project on their house. Pack position: silent. Closing action: establish the PG position of every funding and lease option in writing before heads of terms. Treat any uncapped PG as a pause trigger under document 12 §4.

9. What is the true all-in cheque including the excluded items? Why it matters: document 10 excludes rent, SDLT, and working capital pending a site. A reader skimming the headline could commit to £576k and discover the real first-year cash need is materially higher. Closing action: the moment a candidate site has an asking rent, run the full document 10 build plus 12 months' fixed costs as the committed figure. Until then, quote the capital number only with its exclusions attached.

10. Is there any soft funding? Why it matters: LTA/padel-specific facility funding, Sport England routes and landlord capex contributions all exist in the sector; none are assessed. Closing action: one day of desk research against the current LTA facilities investment round; ask every candidate landlord what capex contribution or rent-free period the covenant supports.

C. Site and statutory — the project-killers

11. Does a qualifying building actually exist right now? Why it matters: the requirement is brutal: ~10m clear eaves, ~3,000 m², adequate slab, near Trentham. Document 02's live scan is already ageing. Scarcity also inverts negotiating power — a landlord with the only qualifying unit knows it. Closing action: refresh the unit scan monthly; treat the number of qualifying units in the catchment as a standing metric, not a one-off finding.

12. Which council is it actually in — and does it matter more than the pack admits? Why it matters: Trentham sits near the boundary of three authorities with different fees, rates pools, planning appetites and (from document 12) a live local-government reorganisation. The same building 400 metres apart can face a different planning committee. Pack position: document 02 maps the boundaries; the fee schedules assume Stoke. Closing action: the first act on any candidate site is a boundary check, then re-run document 06's fee table for the actual authority.

13. Will an insurer cover a largely unmanned racket venue — name one. Why it matters: document 12 lists "insurer acceptance" as an opening gate, but the pack contains no evidence that any UK insurer writes unstaffed sports premises at a viable premium, with minors on site, with alcohol stored on premises overnight. If the answer is no, the lean model — the entire thesis — dies quietly at the last gate. Closing action: broker conversation now, at concept stage, with the unmanned operating description from document 04 in hand. This is a week-one action, not a pre-opening one.

14. Does the candidate unit have the power, and what does the DNO say? Why it matters: the Uttoxeter benchmark unit has 250 kVA. Document 12 carries a £10k–£300k DNO screening range — a 30× spread that only a real application collapses. A £250k reinforcement bill is a different project. Closing action: budget-quote application to the DNO for any shortlisted unit before heads of terms, in parallel with the water pre-development enquiry document 07 already specifies.

15. What is the noise position at the nearest dwelling? Why it matters: padel's glass-wall impact noise is the sector's most common neighbour complaint, abatement action is listed in document 12's secondary risks, and Trentham's edges are residential. Closing action: acoustic consultant's screening letter for any shortlisted site — hours-of-use conditions imposed at planning would directly attack the 07:00–23:00 revenue model.

16. What will the VOA make of it? Why it matters: business rates on 3,000 m² of leisure floorspace are a top-five operating cost, document 07 flags the estimate as provisional, and sports-facility rating treatment varies. Closing action: rating surveyor's opinion once a candidate unit exists; check the 2026 revaluation cycle exposure.

D. Operating model reality

17. Who is the local responder, by name, and where do they sleep? Why it matters: every unmanned-mode playbook in documents 04 and 11 terminates in "dispatch the local responder." That is a real human within a real drive time, on a real contract, at 23:40 on a wet Tuesday. No named responder, no lean model. Closing action: define the maximum response time the insurer and fire strategy will accept, then establish whether such a person can be contracted near the site and at what document 09-compatible cost.

18. What is the unaccompanied-minors policy in unmanned mode? Why it matters: the pack confines junior coaching to staffed hours, but says nothing about two 15-year-olds booking a court at 21:00 through a parent's Playtomic account and entering an empty building. Safeguarding, licensing and insurance all touch this. Closing action: write the age policy into document 11's access SOPs before the insurer conversation in Q13 — it will be their first question.

19. Can you actually hire the hybrid rota in ST4 at the modelled rates? Why it matters: document 09's £278k hybrid envelope assumes people exist at the assumed wages. The benchmark venue's real pay rates are discoverable through anyone who has worked there. Closing action: test the modelled rates against the local leisure labour market and the benchmark's actual rates before treating the staffing envelope as conservative.

20. What evidence converts hybrid to lean — and who signs it? Why it matters: "unmanned is the target state to be earned with 90 days of evidence" (document 12) is the right principle, but nobody defined the evidence: how many incidents per hundred unstaffed hours is acceptable? Who has authority to flip the mode — and to flip it back? Closing action: define the conversion criteria as numbers in document 12's governance section before opening, so the decision is mechanical rather than optimistic.

E. Competition and positioning

21. Why would anyone drive past Uttoxeter or Ace Padel to come here? Why it matters: the pack designs a venue; it never states the proposition. "Closer for some people" is a catchment fact, not a reason to switch clubs — and padel is sticky, social and club-based. Closing action: write the one-paragraph positioning answer (price? court quality? leagues? café? women's programmes?) and test it on ten actual padel players from the catchment before fit-out decisions lock the answer in.

22. Could the landlord — or Trentham's estate operators — do this themselves or host a bigger rival? Why it matters: a destination-leisure landlord who sees the case is a competitor with better economics (no rent) and better footfall. Closing action: factor exclusivity into any Trentham-area negotiation; ask directly what other leisure uses are in the landlord's pipeline.

23. Would a franchise or operating partner beat doing it alone? Why it matters: national operators (the pack never evaluates them) bring booking-network liquidity, procurement leverage and proven SOPs — the exact assets this pack tries to synthesise from scratch. The right comparison is not lean-versus-staffed, it is independent-versus-partnered. Closing action: one exploratory conversation with two national padel operators about their franchise/management-contract terms, purely to price the alternative.

F. Failure and exit

24. What do the courts fetch second-hand, and what does the lease make you put back? Why it matters: the difference between a survivable failure and a ruinous one is residual value minus reinstatement. Document 12 caps reinstatement as a principle but the pack never evidences the second-hand court market. Closing action: ask the court suppliers what they pay for de-installed courts (several trade in them); cap reinstatement in the lease at a priced figure.

25. What are the pre-agreed kill numbers? Why it matters: document 12 has pause triggers for the build. Nothing defines failure in operation — the month-6 and month-12 utilisation/cash numbers below which the answer is stop, not "one more marketing push." Closing action: write the kill thresholds into the governance section before opening, while nobody is emotionally invested in ignoring them.

26. What has actually killed UK padel ventures so far? Why it matters: the sector is young but no longer has zero corpses. Insolvency filings, abandoned planning consents and quietly-closed venues are the cheapest education available. Closing action: half-day search of Companies House insolvency notices and sector press for failed UK padel operators; fold the causes into the risk register.

Using this register

Questions 1–4, 13 and 17 are gating: they can each kill the venture and none requires a site. Everything else sharpens a venture that has already survived them. The correct spend between now and a site decision is measured in phone calls and days of sampling — not in further documents.

Register compiled 7 August 2026 as deliverable 13 of the Trentham Padel turnkey pack. It contains no costings of its own; where a question touches money, the governing figures remain with documents 06, 07, 09, 10 and 12.