MORE than £100,000 is to be spent on converting tennis courts in Blaenavon to a multi-use games area and introducing a gated pay-to-play entry system.
The work at Blaenavon Tennis Courts is being funded through money paid by housing developers and a grant from Sport Wales, but charging will initially only apply to organised groups for tennis.
The courts will be converted to a multi-use games area, known as a MUGA, for tennis, netball and basketball.
Torfaen Borough Council has also agreed the refurbishment of the tennis courts will include a gated technology system that allows access through a Tennis Wales online booking system, known as Club Spark.
Hourly sessions will have to be booked no more than 24-hours in advance, but there will be no charge for casual users intially though schools and tennis clubs will be asked to buy a £39 annual pass that will give them a set number of hourly bookings.
The council is introducing the charges for schools and organised clubs at other courts it is responsible for ahead of consideration of a borough-wide charging policy for tennis courts in the 2025/26 financial year.
The council has more than £30,000 in community benefit funding, paid under a Section 106 legal agreement, from the former Hillside School development and has also been awarded £102,297 from Sport Wales.
It will use the Sport Wales funding and £15,235 from the Section 106 funds, for the refurbishment of the tennis courts with the remaining £15,819 from the developers to be used as a contingency for any unforeseen works and ongoing maintenance costs of the courts that are already the responsibility of the council.