4000+ objections to latest golf course housing plan in Reading
Campaigners say developers should give up
Fresh plans to build 223 homes at Reading Golf Course have been met with over 4,000 objections, according to a campaign group.
Previous attempts to build hundreds of homes on the golf course, located off Kidmore End Road in Emmer Green, have received thousands of objections.
Now, the latest plan for the site which was submitted at the end of last year has received over 4,000 objections, breaking a Reading Borough Council record.
The plans to transform the golf course into a housing development have been opposed from the outset by the Keep Emmer Green campaign.
A statement on the campaign website states:
“Reading Golf Club have once again sparked the most ever objections – over 4,000! – for their latest attempt to build 223 properties on open park land in Emmer Green.”
“The community in Caversham, Emmer Green and South Oxfordshire have made it plain that they have had enough with Reading Golf Club and their developers fiddling with a fundamentally broken proposal.
“We ask the council once again to respect not only the views of their residents, but their own planning strategy and policies, and reject this third application, which – if approved – would destroy hectares of open park land and add over a thousand daily car journeys to polluted Reading roads.
“We ask that Reading Borough Council considers the future benefit to thousands of Reading residents by keeping green space green, and their commitment to define Reading as a ‘city of parks and rivers’ by 2030.”
The proposals to build on Reading Golf Club have been submitted by developers Fairfax Ltd and the golf club itself, which owns the land.
The most recent plan, if approved, would see 223 homes, 67 of which would be affordable, built on the golf course, in a mixture of detached, semi detached and terraced houses.
The last record for the number of objections to a planning application at Reading Borough Council was broken by a previous iteration of the Reading Golf Course plans.
That application, for 257 homes, received more than 3000 objections and was rejected by the council’s planning committee last July.