By Neil Dainton, Neil Dainton Golf

Windlesham Golf Club continues to elevate its reputation in the golfing strong hold of Surrey.

Neil Dainton Golf Consultancy has been working with Windlesham Golf for the last 18 months, helping in all aspects of the operation to enable the club to achieve their goal of becoming, a club at the top of the first division.

2011 saw the addition of 10 new golf buggies as well as a significant investment with Toro in new machinery and a new Head Greenkeeper in Alastair Higgs. As well as this and other areas of work within the club, one of the major projects was to gain various, necessary, planning permissions.

Two of the three projects now have planning with the third due to be presented to the local authority very shortly. Windlesham is in greenbelt land and therefore the planning officers start from a position of ‘no’! With this as a starting point it was very important to set out a clear strategy of how we were going to persuade the Councillors that the additional and extended buildings were essential for the provision of golf.

We pulled together the necessary team to cover all aspects of the application, and made sure that all of the questions that would be raised were answered in our documentation. Investigations into other planning applications, in greenbelt land, were carried out as well as comparisons to the square footage of clubhouses and other buildings at other local clubs. The application for an extra maintenance building was passed in December with a further application for various extensions to the existing clubhouse passed in January. The third application, which is for two irrigation lagoons, a water harvesting project on the Driving Range and new range buildings will be submitted soon.

In the meantime Neil Dainton Consultancy is project managing the build of the two successful applications.

For further information please contact Neil on 07702242036 or neil@neildaintongolf.co.uk