Golf club is hugely valued
The West of Ifield plans would be a monstrous act of crude vandalism.
Homes England is a housing juggernaut proposing to ride roughshod over local opinion and build on an historic golf course within the Horsham District Council area, to the west of Crawley.
Ifield Golf Club is a part of local history. It is not a golf course of no consequence that can be thoughtlessly destroyed, ploughing up nearly 100 years of skilful and loving design and maintenance.
Ifield Golf Club is a mature, parkland course, designed and created in 1927 by the celebrated designers, Taylor and Hawktree, who also created Royal Birkdale, host to the Open Championship.
It is a thriving golf and social facility, which pre-dates commencement of work on Crawley New Town by some 20 years.
The club has attracted celebrities of the fame of Bernard Gallagher and stars Ronnie Corbett, Jimmy Tarbuck, Bruce Forsythe and Eric Sykes.
Fifteen years ago, the Forestry Commission planted 8,500 trees on Ifield Golf course.
Many of these would need to be chopped down to accommodate housing of current density.
Similarly, there would be a loss of established oak trees on Ifield Golf course, many of which are over 100 years old.
The world’s big, old trees store an enormous amount of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere, and will continue to do so, even if their net CO2 uptake decreases. So long as they are not cut down and burned that is.
It is home for wildlife, such as deer, foxes, water birds, red kites, buzzards, kestrels, owls, etc. There is no mention of where these are all to be ‘relocated’.
Ifield Golf Club makes a serious contribution to local recreation and, out of its 550plus members, it can claim nearly 100 golfers under 35 years of age, 26 of which are juniors.
Ifield Golf Club’s 2018 PGA award-winning professional has devoted time to nurturing juniors, including an England under-16 champion.
Many of the club juniors walk to the course with their clubs, They won’t be able to walk to another club!
In addition to the juniors, Horsham District Council are aware that the highest growth in population in the district over the plan period will be in those over 65, and especially the over-75s.
Golf is one of the few sporting activities in which the over-65s can participate. Golf is popular with those of retirement age because it is one of the few sports available to them that provides both social and physical benefits.
Faced with this steep increase in the elderly population, it is ill-considered for the local plan to propose redeveloping one of the most significant remaining golf clubs in the district.
We suspect that Homes England’s view is that they can ignore their obligations under the Government’s National Planning Policy Framework to retain thriving sports facilities by suggesting that golf is a minority sport that would be easily replaced for the over60s by, say, walking football.
But Ifield Golf Club is not a minority sport. It is extremely accessible. Pay and play is available to everyone and attracts over 5,000 visitors per year.
Its cheapest membership options are on a par with K2 Crawley’s popular gym membership, or half the price of a Chelsea FC season ticket.
In spite of the current Covid restrictions the golfing membership of Ifield Golf Club is constantly rising, in addition to which there is a strong and active social membership, involving non-golfing members of the community.
At the moment the eastern edge of Horsham and western edge of Crawley opens on to open country, farmland and a beautiful golf course. If Homes England have their way,
Crawley’s western edge would be a Tarmaced relief road.
In conclusion, Homes England is asking Horsham District Council to provide thousands of houses in the area allegedly to satisfy Crawley’s need while, perversely, Crawley Borough Council has stressed that it doesn’t want all of these houses.
MALCOLM BENDER Rusper Road, Ifield