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The enormous salary paid by the LTA to Andy Murray's departed coach Brad Gilbert helped push up costs in their elite development department by a crunching 68 per cent last year.

Gilbert's £750,000 salary, which

has been scaled down to a

20-week commitment for next

year, contributed to a £1.8million

rise in spending on top senior

players and juniors.

The total was more than £4.5m,

with the LTA's legion of

high-profile part-time coaches,

such as Tim Henman's former

mentor Paul Annacone,

contributing to the sum.

But chief executive Roger

Draper, speaking at the annual

meeting yesterday, wants their

employment to be a temporary

measure.

He said: 'It's certainly a strategy

that we want to move away

from.

'We have very few coaches

who have operated at that

world-class level and we want

the likes of Paul and Brad to

improve the skills of our guys so

that in five years we have British

full-time coaches.

'Coach support in this country is

not generally good, which is why

we have so many foreign coaches

working across all sports.'

With only three active men

inside the world's top 300, LTA

president Stuart Smith conceded

that British rankings were at an

all-time low.

But the message from the

governing body is that it may

take until 2012 before the next

generation come through and a

substantial improvement is seen.

It was also revealed that there

is an element of doubt over

whether the season-ending

Masters Cup event featuring the

top eight players will be coming

to London's 02 Arena in

November 2009, as announced.

The Chinese, who currently host

the tournament in Shanghai,

have an option to retain it until

2010, although the chances are

that it will end up moving to

London on schedule.

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