Editor: I read with interest your article ‘London’s golf courses could create 86,000 new homes’.
Through our venture with the Bangarra Family Office, over the past two years, Sequoia Real Estate has repositioned Crown Golf from being the UK’s largest owner and operator of golf courses into a significant property company and strategic land investor.
As we promote golf course development in London and the South East, I concur on the scale of the opportunity. Subject to planning, we will deliver more than 6,000 new home plots, including multi-generational accommodation types, build-to-rent apartments, single-family homes, affordable homes, student halls of residence, retirement villages, gated private estates and holiday lodges.
The average metropolitan, 18-hole golf course covers 150 acres, so their appeal for development is clear. They require intensive landscape management, creating an unnatural landscape that offers little ecological benefit.
Most courses operate for 500 private members but deliver few wider community benefits. Compare that with 1,000 new homes, a school, public sports pitches and open space set within an attractive landscape on the same land, and the benefit to wider society of golf course development is marked.
A commitment to high-quality development, a collaborative style of working with local authorities and a desire to deliver wider community benefits are helping us unlock some key planning wins.
Repurposing golf course land is a game we have been playing for a while. We fully support teeing off a monster development drive of London’s many golf courses.
Jason Mills, CEO of Crown Golf Property and Sequoia Real Estate
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