Hoylake Golf Resort: A large number of Wirral residents do NOT want it [2016].
Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,
Please provide details of surveys, with dates, of public opinion, conducted by Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (in an open, fair and transparent manner), showing the research done by the Council to support its proposal for a Hoylake Golf Resort.
Hoylake is a small coastal town with two golf courses already (one publicly-owned and one privately-owned). To suggest that Hoylake can thrive by having a third golf course appears to be ridiculous, to many local residents.
Hoylake and West Kirby are fortunate to be bordered by one just fourteen Green Belt areas in England. Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council should be protecting the green belt land at Hoylake and West Kirby for the benefit of present and future generations.
HOYLAKE GOLF RESORT: No thanks!
IN 2004 Wirral metropolitan Borough Council cobbled together a Hoylake and West Kirby ‘Masterplan’, intended to outline future proposals for Hoylake and West Kirby. The Council says that 300 people attended a public meeting in Hoylake. One part of the Council’s ‘masterplan’ included proposals for a golf resort, to be built on Green Belt land. Out of the 300 people who attended the public meeting, 48 people returned a questionnaire to the Council. Out of the 48 people who returned questionnaires, 3 people “strongly agreed” with proposals for a golf resort and 13 people “agreed” with proposals for a golf resort.
This wholly flawed consultation process, in which only 48 people returned questionnaires (some with sections completed), out of a local population of over 13,000 residents, was followed by the Council spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, of public funds, developing a plan for a ‘Hoylake Golf Resort’.
Members of the public are legally entitled to participate in planning matters, early on, when all options are open and when their participation can be effective.
The Golf resort is to include roads, a 250 bedroom hotel, car parking areas, luxury housing estates, a conference centre and a spa, on Green Belt Land that has received protection from such overdevelopment since 1955. The Hoylake Municipal Golf Course (at present owned by the public) is to be relocated, further away from Hoylake, whilst the private golf resort takes possession of the existing municipal golf course.
The Council is legally required to act in an open, transparent and fair manner, in planning matters.
Subsequent to spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on payments to consultants, the Council is now, attempting to engineer a consultation exercise that will, belatedly, provide some support for its 285 acre Hoylake Golf Resort proposal.
The Council's financial calculations don't appear to make any sense at all. The Council says that the Golf Resort scheme is a £120 million development. This is somewhat concerning since the Council should, from a purely commercial perspective, be receiving several million GB pounds for each acre of green belt land it wishes to sell. Architects fees, amounting to 10% of the overall development costs, would be £12 million. Architects fees are normally 'front-loaded' (paid in advance of the commencement of development work).
In Northern Ireland, a golf resort, similar to this one, proposed for Hoylake and West Kirby, was recently declared bankrupt with debts of £26 million. The precious green belt land around Hoylake and West Kirby is likely to become one sprawling housing estate if this golf resort fails to be a financial success, which is very possible
The Hoylake Municipal Golf Course, once privatised, may never be replaced.
Members of the public wanting to protect the Hoylake and West Kirby Green Belt, should do their best to object to the loss of Green Belt land.
Post letters, opposing the Hoylake Golf Resort scheme, to Margaret Greenwood, the Wirral West MP (c/o House of Commons, Westminster, London) or email her at: [email address].
If you want to know more about Golf Resorts, google the excellent, BBC documentary; ‘Dark Side of the Greens’, which you can still view on youtube.
Google: Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) for information about Green Belt land, including a map of the 14 Green Belt areas in England.
Yours faithfully,
Alan Rundle
Dear Mr Rundle
Thank you for your recent request made under the Freedom of Information
Act.
Wirral Borough Council has not researched public opinion by way of a
formal survey, and therefore has no recorded information to provide to you
in response to your enquiry.
The Council has however engaged with the public via six public
consultation drop in events held over a two week period in both Hoylake
and West Kirby, details of which have already been provided to you in
response to an earlier FOI request
([1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/h...).
Yours sincerely,
Andy Henderson
Information Management Officer
Information Management
Legal & Member Services
Transformation & Resources Department
Wallasey Town Hall
Brighton Street
Wallasey
Wirral
CH44 8ED
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[2]cid:image002.jpg@01D066DD.D7571B40
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ScarletPimpernel left an annotation ()
Try the published comments here on Wirral Council's website, left in response to some sort of survey about the Hoylake Golf Resort https://www.wirral.gov.uk/sites/default/... .