Golf club plans are best for community

DEAR Editor, Councillor Cartwright’s comments (“Call to ditch homes for new park”, Birmingham Post, March 30) are not helpful, incorrect and show a lack of understanding of the nature of our arrangement with Bloor Homes, the views of local residents and most of all the situation the club finds itself in.

North Worcestershire Golf Club was initially invited to put itself forward for the draft development plan as a likely site for residential development. The club subsequently removed itself from this process while we continued to work hard to save the golf club from closing.

Numerous recruitment campaigns took place without any significant improvement. We also attempted to work closely with other users on a partnership basis. However, they had no viable plans.

The contractual position that we committed to with Bloor is called an Option Agreement. It binds us and them to pursuing the development of the site for housing. The Option Agreement then commits us to selling the land to Bloor Homes on grant of planning and is a long-term agreement which makes it impossible to introduce other potential purchasers or developers to the site.

We don’t understand our local councillors’ lack of support for housing in the area. More residents supported the principle of housing on the site through the developer’s public consultation and also in response to Birmingham City Council’s own consultation through the application process.

We do hear the argument that Birmingham didn’t allocate this land through their plan but they only made limited allocations and still have an enormous housing shortfall.

Aside from the contractual position and the need for housing, which we agree with, the golf course redevelopment masterplan has gone through a lot of change to the benefit of the local community. We hoped that rather than only supporting the vociferous few that councillors would have taken a more active role in this process.

The revised application includes a reduction in the amount of housing, a substantial increase in the amount of public open space, a multi-use community centre and importantly a new primary school which