The fate of Southwood Golf Course in Hampshire was sealed this week when Rushmoor Borough Council voted for the 18-layout near Farnborough to be converted into public parkland.
The publicly-funded golf course will shut and make way for around 50 hectares of public green space. Together with Southwood Woodland and other green open space nearby, this would create a large country park area, offering activities including walking, cycling, trim trails, natural play structures and a community orchard.
This new parkland would become what is known as Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace (SANG). Being a SANG permanently protects the land as public open space, meaning it would never be built on. It also means that the council would use developers’ contributions to pay for its creation and upkeep.
Southwood Golf Course opened in the late 1970s, and became an 18-hole course in 1988. The club currently has around 175 members, but the number of the rounds played by visitors, which makes up the bulk or revenue, has dwindled significantly in recent years, and it now costs the council around £40,000 a year to subsidise the venue.
Councillor Martin Tennant, Rushmoor Borough Council’s cabinet member for Environment and Service Delivery, said: “Converting Southwood into natural open parkland will permanently protect the land as green open space. It will also allow for around 2,500 new homes to be built elsewhere in the borough. We recognise that golf supports our health and wellbeing agenda, and the course is popular with those who use it, even though numbers have dropped in recent years.”
He added: “We will be spending time with the golf course users, members, and the club, to understand better the impact the decision will have on them, what their needs might be going forward, and what we could do to help mitigate the potential loss of the course.”
A date for the closure of the course has yet to be announced.