Next steps — contacts and first moves

Send them the financial overview and ask directly: would you arrange finance for a brand-new company on this plan, and on what terms and deposit? Their site lists what they want to see first: a business plan, a cashflow forecast, evidence of our own money going in, relevant experience, and what security is available.

The largest loan in the funding plan is asset finance — borrowing secured on the courts and fit-out itself.

Mill Wood arranges exactly this for padel venues, so their answer tells us quickly whether that part of the plan is realistic. If it is, we also come away with real numbers (rate, term, deposit) to replace our estimates, and a broker who has already done padel deals to present ours to lenders when the time comes.

A 30-minute coffee. We’re four locals putting together a serious plan for an indoor padel venue in the corridor — could she talk us through the Sussex padel scene and how LTA venue registration works?

Partly information, mostly the relationship — and it’s worth being clear that the relationship is the point.

County associations hear early who is planning courts where and which schemes are stuck in planning. They also write letters of support for planning applications, and they connect new venues into the leagues and club networks that fill weekday courts. Being known to them before we need anything is the real value of the coffee. Along the way we learn whether venue registration (insurance, sanctioned competitions, coaching pipeline) is worth it for us.

An indicative installed price for four doubles courts and two singles courts, indoor, to LTA specification — and whether they’ll visit candidate buildings once we have a shortlist. Padel Tech’s enquiry form asks about planning status, funding status and court count, so have answers ready.

A real quote to replace the estimates in the build budget — this single number moves the whole financial model.

A site visit from an installer is also effectively a free structural check on any building we’re considering, from people who have seen every conversion mistake already. And suppliers usually bring their own finance introductions, which connects back to the Mill Wood conversation.

The build-it-ourselves route (business case, Section 10) needs one specification sent to six firms and the answers compared — Northpower (northpower.se, the Swedish factory whose catalogue six-court hall anchors the budget; they haven't sold in the UK, so ask what delivered-and-erected to Sussex costs and treat the answer as a negotiation, not a no), Hallgruppen (hallgruppen.co.uk, Stoke), TotalSpan for the Frisomat system (totalspan.co.uk), Rubb (rubbuk.com, Gateshead), SMC2 (smc2-construction.co.uk) and Smart-Space (smart-space.co.uk). The spec: a fully enclosed six-court padel hall, ~48×35m, minimum 8m clear over the courts, insulated to Part L, mezzanine over the changing rooms, delivered and erected price for a Mid Sussex site, with timber cladding and a glazed frontage priced as options. Six answers to the same letter turn the £1.6–2.8m budget range into a real number.

Would you consider hosting indoor padel courts on your site, built and operated by a funded local group? For Mid Sussex GC specifically: your application failed on noise and floodlighting — an enclosed building answers both, and we’d bring the capital and the operations.

To find out whether the country-club version of this venue — courts with Downs views on an established rural site, using their clubhouse, parking and power — is available at all.

Recent decisions show exactly this format getting approved (Plumpton Racecourse, Q Leisure, even a grain-store conversion inside the National Park), so the question is only whether a site wants a partner. One warm reply changes the whole shape of the project. One update since the first draft: Singing Hills now sits next door to the approved six-court Padel Club scheme at Q Leisure, which weakens it as a host — keep the letter, lower the expectation.

The bikeable version of the site (business case, Section 10) has its own approach list — Hassocks Golf Club (has released land before, escarpment views, between the two towns), Burgess Hill Golf Centre (driving range on the town’s north-west edge — the closest thing to the Whitemans Green model), St Francis Sports & Social Club in Haywards Heath (already holds temporary padel consent), and the district council’s Brookleigh Centre for Outdoor Sport team, whose own consultation FAQ fields padel questions — that one goes through Mid Sussex District Council and Places Leisure rather than a cold letter to a club.

One evening, three decisions, written down. First, the structure: not-for-profit or company limited by shares (the fork described at the top of this sheet). Second, founder terms: who owns what, who does what, and who signs personal guarantees, capped at what. Third, the strategy: do we adopt the two-company plan in the strategy note — the venue plus an operator-owned booking software company, built in parallel — or keep this venue-only? The parallel build only makes sense if the group genuinely wants both.

Every later application needs to know which structure we are, so this unblocks everything.

Agreeing the difficult terms now is far easier than agreeing them once real money is involved, and the strategy decision determines whether a second company gets incorporated at all. It’s the cheapest insurance in the whole plan.

One application per founder — £500–£25,000 each at 7.5% fixed over one to five years, with no security and no personal guarantees. Founders applying must together hold at least half the company.

Up to £100k of the funding plan that doesn’t depend on trading history — the layer that substitutes for the founder capital we don’t have.

We’d only draw it once there’s a project to spend it on.

HMRC’s advance confirmation that investment in the company would qualify for EIS tax relief. It needs an incorporated company, a business plan, forecasts, and evidence of prospective investors — a letter from a crowdfunding platform counts.

The letter itself.

Angel networks won’t look at a company without it; with it, an investor putting in £1,000 is effectively risking £700 after the tax relief. It’s the domino that has to fall before any investor conversation is real.

A pitch slot for an EIS-qualifying round of £250–350k, built on the demand data in the business case.

The first £50–150k of the equity round soft-committed, or failing that, introductions — local angel networks know the county’s family offices and business owners.

A lead investor from here also makes a later Crowdcube round credible, since crowd platforms want a third to half of the target committed before a pitch goes public.

Membership, the strategy session that comes with it, and an introduction to the University of Sussex Business Angels programme.

A second pool of local investors, ongoing advisory support, and more people who know us before we’re asking them for anything.

The council’s advice on converting the shortlisted building to indoor sport use, with the jobs-and-community case attached.

The council’s written steer before we commit to a lease.

It’s the single most persuasive de-risking document we can show a landlord, a lender or an investor.

Crowdcube reviews the company and assigns a campaign manager, but expects you to bring your own crowd — by convention roughly a third to half of the target committed from your own network and anchor investors before the pitch goes public. The public phase runs a few weeks; end to end is around three to four months, and founders who’ve done it describe the campaign as close to a full-time job for one person (the pitch video, the financial model, and answering every investor question on a public wall). The hundreds of small investors sit in Crowdcube’s nominee company, so they appear as a single line on the cap table. The pitch video is produced at the company’s own cost.

An equity round to close the remaining £150–250k, launched once an anchor investor exists.

The money, and something money can’t usually buy — a couple of hundred local investors who become founding members with a personal stake in filling the venue on quiet nights.

Four UK padel businesses have raised at this size on the platform, and the founders of two of them are on the people list below — the cheapest expertise available is an hour with someone who has done it.

The Jonathan Lea Network in Haywards Heath runs a dedicated crowdfunding legal service (structuring, nominee agreements, promotion review) alongside EIS work and commercial property — one local firm that could cover the raise and the lease. wewillhelp@jonathanlea.net · 01444 708 640. SeedLegals covers the round documents and EIS side too.

A loan covering up to half the cost of covered courts at 5% fixed.

The cheapest capital available in this sport — but only if the group chose the not-for-profit structure at decision 1.

On the equity route this door is closed.