Maidenhead Golf Club hopes for more information to plan for its future

Maidenhead Golf Club is hoping to hear more soon about a developer’s plans to turn its course into a housing scheme of up to 1,500 homes – so it can get some clarity over its future.

Windsor and Maidenhead council owns the freehold for the site and Maidenhead Golf Club (MGC) leases it from them.

The land is allocated for homes in the Borough Local Plan (BLP) – and there is a surrender agreement that the club will move off at the end of December 2025 to make room for these.

Ongoing discussions and plans from the golf club to find a new home have not borne fruit so far.

At one point, there were hopes to move onto the Winter Hill Golf Club in Cookham after its then owners, the John Lewis Partnership, announced they would be closing it.

But Winter Hill was saved by Get Golfing charity, taking that option off the table.

There were discussions about whether Winter Hill’s members and MGC’s members could join together under one club – but lately there have been ‘no discussions’ with Winter Hill about this.

MGC’s options limited. It has 690 members (of which about 500 are active golfers) and use course of about 130 acres, so it is difficult to find a new place.

The club no longer realistically has the option to buy land to build a new golf course from scratch because there is not enough time, said club chairman Paul Louden.

“We tried looking at that in the past but we've got two years to go and you wouldn't be able to make up a golf course [in that time],” Paul said.

“If we’re not going to dissolve the club completely – which is one of the options – we have to find somewhere else for everyone to come and play and that's the hardest thing to do at the moment.

“We have not yet been able to find an alternative solution.”

Nonetheless, ‘never say die’, he said.

"We're open to suggestions. If anyone's got a really good suggestion that will work, we would always look at things,” said Paul.

“If we go through to next year and we can’t find anywhere to go, that would be the end of the golf club and that would be very sad for us and a lot of people in Maidenhead.”

MGC has a ‘significant number’ of older members who use the golf club house as a place to meet friends, socialise and make plans together.

“That's something that would be a great loss for many people – not just the golf,” said Paul.

The club’s immediate future, before the end of 2025, has also been thrown into question.

On January 8, an outline application detailing the proposed homes scheme, dubbed the Elizabeth Quarter, was submitted by CALA Homes.

MGC has had a brief conversation with the Royal  Borough and the developer about how this might develop – and is hoping to hear more soon.

“We’re looking for some more information from [CALA Homes], so we get a better understanding of how much of the course they're going to want to access initially, and how long it's all going to take,” said Paul.

“If somebody has to do groundworks or something like that, that will have an impact. But we don't have the details yet.”

The club is keen to keep the current high standard of its course until such time as it may have to move.

“If we’re still the tenants of the property, we’re going to want to play golf on that property until the end of 2025,” said Paul.

“Timescales are very important to us. We'd like to know what kind of developments [will happen], what impact they're going to have on the course, and when they expect to do that.”

More information is ‘likely’ to come soon – the next known development is that the golf club is having its AGM this weekend, where there will be discussions among club members.