Woking Borough Council and New Zealand Golf Club

[Jon Wiggett]

But again, it is very unlikely that a CPO would be successful as though the basis of the search for land is council driven the actual enterprise will be privately funded. CPO are not designed to purchase private property in order for private companies to make a profit. Were it the council building council houses for rent then this might be different. The housing problem especially in the London area is entirely down to poor government policy over the last 50 years and is very easily remedied but for political tunnel vision.


Jon

[Adrian_Stiff]

Nial - You can average 20 houses/homes per acre so at £50k per plot it is £1M. That 20 dwellings is maximised by terraced looking houses that are starter homes often with an up and down. So 2 properties could sit on 50 square metres, you can even triple up for flats (or more). About 4000 squared metres in an acre. So in theory and taking it to an extreme 500 squared metres (just 0.125 acre) could be the footprint for the housing, leaving 0.875 acres for roads, gardens. 2000 homes is virtually a new town, so with mixed types of (35 per acre - high density starters, ie flats) (10 per acre - standard) (6 per acre - luxury housing). The better money is the high density for small areas, town planning is an art in itself, but £1,000,000 per acre in the South of England/ M4 corridor is about the benchmark and does include the infrastructure. Scottish prices by comparison are rubbish unfortunately. We are working on a project in Scotland I reckon it's less than 0.5 acre but we are still looking at 16 properties and it includes the road in and associated parking.

[Niall C]

Adrian


I quite appreciate the difference between the M4 corridor and pretty well most of Scotland with a few notable exceptions. When you say £1m per acre includes the infrastructure are you saying the land buyer is getting a site with infrastructure in place for £1m per acre or are they getting it without ? What I was also querying was whether the £1m/acre was gross or net of "abnormals" ? The volume house builders, up here at least, all bid on the basis of gross and I'm fairly sure that's the same south of the border.


Then you have the scale of the development and I'd suggest building and flogging 2,000 units quickly would be a tall order even for M4 corridor hence my comment about land for later phases being discounted, particularly with heavy infrastructure costs likely incurred up front. Basically jam today is worth more than jam tomorrow if you follow.


Duncan


I don't think you need to fret just yet about the club being CPO'd. Zoning doesn't imply CPO. It's not unusual for certain properties to be zoned for different uses at different times. As someone else pointed out its a bit of a numbers game that the Council has to play to show that they have a set amount of possible non-greenfield land.


Niall 

[Adrian_Stiff]

Adrian


I quite appreciate the difference between the M4 corridor and pretty well most of Scotland with a few notable exceptions. When you say £1m per acre includes the infrastructure are you saying the land buyer is getting a site with infrastructure in place for £1m per acre or are they getting it without ? What I was also querying was whether the £1m/acre was gross or net of "abnormals" ? The volume house builders, up here at least, all bid on the basis of gross and I'm fairly sure that's the same south of the border.


Then you have the scale of the development and I'd suggest building and flogging 2,000 units quickly would be a tall order even for M4 corridor hence my comment about land for later phases being discounted, particularly with heavy infrastructure costs likely incurred up front. Basically jam today is worth more than jam tomorrow if you follow.


Duncan


I don't think you need to fret just yet about the club being CPO'd. Zoning doesn't imply CPO. It's not unusual for certain properties to be zoned for different uses at different times. As someone else pointed out its a bit of a numbers game that the Council has to play to show that they have a set amount of possible non-greenfield land.


Niall

I would say with a large block say 200 acres you would get £200,000,000 in many places along the M4 corridor. Of that 200 acres not every square metre is the housing. You might have some zoned green areas in a 200 acre parcel and you might get close to zero for that. In this area homes sell like hot cakes, they basically are flat out in this area, builders are getting £200 a day, no one is struggling for work. Affording the properties if the base rate gets back to 5% will be another thing. If I was selling a big block of land then I would just phase it and be the bank and let them the developer buy in bits. Historically you would get even more.


I know property prices are much lower up North and a lot of the lower price is reflected in the 'hot aired' land value. In raw terms you can't build significantly cheaper in Scotland than England.

[Tom Kelly]

A great example of where the 'listing' of golf courses that has been discussed many times on GCA would be suitable and worthwhile.


NZGC as far as I am aware is the best example of Tom Simpson's work in the UK, perhaps only Morfontaine is more significant as an example of his work and with so few of his courses left intact it would be a massive loss to the golfing community, possibly even more so than any other course in England from an architecture point of view in my opinion.


Unfortunately it's private nature would likely go against it but as has been mentioned I would expect (and hope) that there are a few members with the suitable experience and contacts to fight any proposals.


The sale of golf courses for housing is and will become more common, we just need to hope that the 'right' courses are sold rather than gems like NZGC.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

There was a very famous incident some years ago when Moor Allerton sold its golf course for housing in north Leeds. They moved out into the country and built 27 holes of Robert Trent Jones golf anew. The knock on effect was to cause Sand Moor to give up some land for housing and build replacement holes, and for Moortown to lose some original holes because of the encroachment of housing. Sadly, I never played the old Moor Allerton course which was a MacKenzie. I don't much care for the RTJ replacement. 

[Mark Chaplin]

Intensely private golf clubs may not have much of a cause with the general public but they do tend to be crammed with all sorts of influential types. An eminent planning QC on the membership roll is worth more than 50,000 signatures on a petition.

[Jon Wiggett]

Mark R,


the big loser in that situation was Moortown as when the original housing was built the original owners signed an agreement accepting stray golf balls might from time to time end up in their back gardens. However, the subsequent owners of said houses did not have this agreement so when two who bordered the old 13th complained the club were forced to alter the course to the detriment of the course itself. Whilst I understand the reasons of the home owners it must have been a little upsetting for the club when they admitted one of the reasons they bought the house was because it backed onto the golf course.


I too never played the old Moor Allerton though have known plenty who did and only heard good reports about it. The new 27 hole RTJ course is very severe being long, with very difficult greens and quite muddy. I have to add that it is a long time (30 years) since I played the course so much might have changed.


Sandmoor has 14 good holes all of which are original, two holes that are half decent plus two absolute stinkers the latter 4 being the replacement holes. I would recommend playing it if you are in the area.


Jon