Yoga studio and padel courts approved for East Yorkshire farm

Two farm buildings at Beacon Farm near Bainton have been approved for a pilates and hot yoga studio and two padel courts, turning a working East Yorkshire farmstead into a hybrid wellness and sport site without clearing the land for a fresh build.

The plan keeps the project inside the footprint of the existing agricultural buildings. There will be no demolition and no major external alterations to either structure, while a modest lean-to extension will be added for showers and changing rooms serving the padel users. Parking is set to use existing hardstanding in the farmyard, and access will come from the A614 near its roundabout with the B1248, which keeps the traffic pattern practical rather than dependent on new estate-style infrastructure.

In the planning material, the scheme was framed as a "modest and sustainable farm diversification initiative" that makes use of existing agricultural buildings within the established farmstead. That matters in a rural patch like Bainton, because the approval shows how a farm can add a commercial wellness offer without pushing into open agricultural land or changing the character of the wider field system around it.

The bigger story for yoga readers is how the studio is being bundled with padel, one of the fastest-growing racket sports in Britain. The Lawn Tennis Association said padel participation in Great Britain exceeded 400,000 adults and juniors at the end of 2024, up from 129,000 at the end of 2023. It also said Britain had reached 1,000 padel courts in July 2025, compared with just 68 in 2019. That growth helps explain why East Riding planners are seeing more padel applications land on their desks.

Beacon Farm is not the only local example. East Riding of Yorkshire Council has also approved padel courts at Driffield Rugby Union Football Club, a proposal that was backed as a way to support local jobs and meet unmet demand. Taken together, the approvals point to a clear pattern: padel is moving from novelty to infrastructure, and rural sites are starting to look like plausible homes for it.

For Beacon Farm, the appeal is in that mix of access, restraint and novelty. It is a yoga and padel destination that still reads like a farmstead, and that balance may be exactly why planners signed off on it.