Court Booking Rules

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BOOKING RULES

The booking rules are designed to spread out access over the whole membership base and at the same time give people the opportunity to book a week in advance. The rules below
are for a standard adult membership. For Off Peak Junior Membership rules see FAQ at end of this document.


How the Court Booking Rules Currently Work


Advance Court Bookings
  • The standard booking window is 7 days and operates on a rolling basis i.e. a court booking for 9am on a Monday morning opens up at 9am the previous Monday and a slot starting at 10am opens at 10am previous Monday.
  • Any booking must name at least one opponent.
  • Every adult and peak junior member can have 3 open bookings (of up to 90 mins each) at any one time:
               1 of these bookings must be at an off peak time: before 5pm on weekdays and after 5pm at weekends.
  • Open Court Bookings – are any booking you are named on (irrespective of who made the booking) which have yet to be completed.
  • There is a waiting list facility on court bookings, so if a court is already booked at the time you would like to play, you can add your name to the waiting list for that court and if it becomes free you will be notified by email.


Note – attendance at Club organised sessions eg Club Team Training on Tuesdays, Social Tennis, Drill sessions etc do NOT count towards your court booking allowance

Chance Court Booking
This is the ability to book a court on the same day irrespective of your other bookings. This can be used up to 12 hours ahead of the time you want to play. For example, on any day at 8am you could book a free court for anytime that same day up to 8pm. Do note that this facility only works for same day bookings, you cannot use this option the night before. You can use this facility as many times as you want to. 

Booking Floodlights

The floodlights are on an automatic setting which dictates when they can come on, this also depends on the time of year and specifically sunset time. This impacts the point at which you have to book/pay for floodlights:

  • When booking a court with floodlights a fee of £2.50 will show for each half an hour slot. If your booking falls completely within the floodlight period, you will need to pay the floodlight fee to book the court (£7.50 for 90 mins).
  • If your booking starts before the floodlight period but includes a floodlit slot you will NOT be charged for floodlights at the time of booking and the floodlights will not come on. However, on the day you can add floodlights to your booking. The system allows you to determine at which point you do this, so that you are not charged unnecessarily for the lights. For example, if your booking is from 7.30pm to 9.00pm and the last 2 30 mins slots were shown with floodlight costs, there will be no fee charged when you book the courts.  

On the day, from 15 minutes before the start of your booking you can add floodlights to your booking. You can do this at any point in your booking and you will be charged for the floodlights for the half an hour in which you add the booking. In the above example if you add lights at 7.16pm you will be charged £7.50 for lights for the full 90 minutes of your booking. If you don’t add lights before, but after having started playing, you decide at 7.35pm you want the lights on, you can add them at this point. You will still be charged £7.50 for lights, as you are using lights across three 30-minute slots. If you add lights at 8.02pm you will be charged for use of lights in two of the 30-minute slots of your booking, i.e. £5.00.

See FAQ for more information on how to add lights to your booking.


TIPS ON HOW TO BEST USE THE BOOKING SYSTEM


● If you wish to secure a booking with good notice AND at peak times you should book this well in advance (up to 7 days ahead)
● If playing for 90 minutes, you should ensure that you book your slot as a full 90 minute slot and not a 30 minute plus 60 minute slot as the latter will use up 2 bookings
● An off-peak booking needs to be completed by 5pm on a weekday or start at 5pm at weekends. If your booking spans off peak and peak times this will have to be 2 bookings, so you cannot make a single 90 mins booking starting at 4pm or 4.30pm.
● If you need more court bookings, consider using the chance booking option which allows you on the day to have an extra open booking for any available court up to 12 hours before the court starts.
● If booking courts for doubles, opt for the singles setting and name one of the players who tends to play less regularly as the named player.
● If your named player is not yet available, consider using the Visitors option to secure the court. You will pay £2.50 per half hour for this but you can go in later in the week and amend your booking from Visitor to the named player and the fee is immediately credited to your pre-payment account. This credit is automatically used against any future payment whether it be a club event, club coaching session, tournament entry etc. It is clearly visible on the account (or use it for another ‘visitor booking’).


Frequently Asked Questions


Answers to the following frequently asked questions are provided below:
● How do I add lights to my booking?
● Can I book a court for single use eg serve practice
● How can I make more than 2 peak time bookings in a week?
● The booking system will not let me name my opponent – why is this?
● Why can’t I book a court when I only have 2 open bookings?
● The booking system will not let me make a 90 minute booking at 4pm or 4.30pm on a weekday – why is this?


How do I add lights to my booking?


1. 15 minutes or less from the start of your booking go to Bookings in your booking system account.

2. Select Show and you will be taken to the court schedule where you should select your booking
3. You will then see a tab ‘Add Lights’. Fees for lights ‘added’ in this way are non-refundable as the addition is made whilst the player is at the Club with full knowledge of the weather conditions.

Can I book a court for single use e.g. to practice serve?

You can use court 5 to practice serving or the wall. When making the booking search for member ‘Solo Use Court 5 ‘.

How can I make more than 2 peak time bookings in a week?

If you are wanting to make more than 2 peak bookings in a week you can do this if at least one of your bookings is earlier in the week. Then once that booking has been used you can make another booking e.g:

  • On Sunday make a booking for the following Sunday 10.00am – 11.30am
  • At the same time, you see there is availability for Tuesday evening 6.30pm – 7.30pm which you decide to book.
  • You now have 2 peak bookings.
  • But you can still make an off-peak booking, so you book mid -week Wednesday morning at 9.00am
  • After playing on Tuesday evening, you now only have one peak booking so you can make another peak booking or another off-peak booking. There is still availability Saturday lunchtime, so you book a court for 1.00pm (a peak booking)
  • You make the first three bookings with individuals who have not reached their maximum open bookings.
  • On trying to make the fourth booking you find your opponent cannot be booked as they already have got 3 bookings. You use the visitor option to secure the booking (see tips
    above).

The booking system will not let me name my opponent – why is this?

This is usually because your opponent already has 3 open bookings. You can use the visitor option and then update the booking once your opponent has used one of their open bookings – the visitor fee will then be refunded to your pre-payment account.

To book a court with a junior member you will need to use their Member / User ID as junior members names are not shown in the members contact list unless they have changed their privacy settings.

Why can’t I book a court when I only have 2 open bookings?

There could be a couple of reasons for this, if your 2 bookings are in the peak periods, then you can only make a third booking in an off-peak slot. Or it could be that for one of your bookings you have selected a 30 minute slot and a 60 minute slot, effectively making it 2 bookings. You need to convert this to one 90 minute booking.

The booking system will not let me make a 90 minute booking at 4pm or 4.30pm on a weekday – why is this?

This is because your booking spans off-peak and peak times. So if you want to play for 90 mins starting at 4pm you will need to make one booking for 4 to 5pm (off peak) and a separate booking for 30 mins starting at 5pm (peak booking).

What are the booking rules for Junior members?

Peak junior members have the same booking rights as adult members. Off-peak junior members can book the following:

Midweek

  • Brookside up until 10.00pm
  • Main Court 5 only up until 10.00pm (no other access to main courts mid week)
  • School courts 4.00pm to 7.00pm

Weekend

  • School courts 1.00pm onwards
  • Brookside courts anytime
  • Main courts from 5.00pm