A TENNIS club that has waited a quarter of a century to move to a new court has been hit by “frustrating” delays at the last minute.

Wantage Tennis Club has been looking to move out of its Foliat Drive site in the middle of a housing estate for 25 years so it could expand.

It was given planning permission three years ago to create four new courts and a clubhouse alongside the two civic tennis courts at Wantage Recreation Ground.

All it had to do was get getting permission to build six houses on its current site then it could sell it for about £500,000 to fund the new development.

The club submitted a planning application for the houses to Vale of White Horse District Council on March 4, and the Vale said it would give them a decision by April 29.

But that date came and went with no decision.

Now the club has waited for the decision for so long that its planning permission for new courts at the park, which was only valid for three years, expired in the middle of May, and it has had to reapply.

Chairman Steve Thompson said: “If we had got permission in April we could have completed it before the winter, but now we’re too late.

“We are ready to start work straight away – I have been working on this for four-and-a-half years – but the Vale kept postponing the decision because it said there were delays in planning applications.

“It postponed it to May 27, then to July 1.

“It hasn’t even given us a reason for the delays, it just said it was behind.”

The Vale’s planning department was hit with huge disruption in January when their offices at Crowmarsh Gifford near Wallingford were destroyed in an arson attack.

But when asked by The Herald, the council did not cite the fire as a reason for the delay.

Spokeswoman Natalie Ellis said planning officers had worked with the club to amend the original application to build the six homes on Foliat Drive as it would have been “harmful to the amenity of neighbouring occupiers”.

The plan is now due to be determined in July, she said. She did not comment on the likelihood of the old application for the Recreation Ground being granted permission a second time.