In January, the mayor of London’s office took charge of the decision on whether to approve the controversial plans to build on a Grade II*-listed park to expand The Championships.

Sally Bolton, The Championships’ chief executive, said she was aware of protests on Monday but maintained she was happy with the level of consultation by the All England Club.

“We’re really confident in the application that we’ve put in,” she said. “It’s been well thought through. It’s been well tested. We’ve had an awful lot of local community feedback. We’ve engaged with over 8,000 people in terms of our consultation, so we’re very happy with what’s in that application.”

Campaigners have condemned the plans as an “industrial tennis complex”. The proposals to almost triple the size of the grounds from 17 hectares (42 acres) to 46 hectares had been approved by Merton council but rejected by neighbouring Wandsworth council.

Wimbledon Park, which was landscaped by Capability Brown in the 18th century and is protected as “metropolitan open land”, stretches into both boroughs, so, in order for the plan to go ahead, it needed to be approved by both councils.

The first visitor to step through the gates on Monday was Blase Walton, who told Telegraph Sport he had been camping for three days.

Mr Walton, a manager for the gym chain David Lloyd, had camped on Wimbledon Park since Friday morning with his colleagues and claimed to have resisted attempts by park rangers to turf him out.

The 41-year-old from Basildon, Essex said: “We made an unofficial queue around the corner, we were asked to remove [ourselves] or be removed at 1am in the morning by the park rangers but we held our ground a little bit, broke a few rules. We weren’t hurting anyone, we were just sleeping.

“In a tent there were six of us, I’m rackets manager at David Lloyd Basildon, there is a group of us here… we were able to shower at David Lloyds Raynes Park and went for a quick spa – it has been nice. If we’re camping for three solid days we are going to have a good time.”

He said he had been 300th and 41st in the queue in previous years.

A separate small protest on Monday was led by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which said on its website: “We need to make sure that Barclays has no place to hide from its complicity in Israel’s devastating attacks on Palestinians”.

Last year, three Just Stop Oil protesters disrupted the tournament, throwing confetti and jigsaw pieces on the court. They were charged with aggravated trespass. This year, jigsaws will not be on sale in the club shop as part of increased security measures.