\n The council leases the land to Crowlands Heath Golf Club.\n<\/p>\n
\n Crowlands Heath Golf Course entrance (Image: Google)\n<\/p>\n
\n The club only has 79 golfing members at present, however, and Cllr Twomey told the cabinet meeting that it is making a loss.\n<\/p>\n
\n Homes For Life asked to buy the land from the council after already reaching an agreement with the golf club.\n<\/p>\n
\n A report presented to the cabinet said that of the 1,106 homes, 60 per cent would be social housing and 40pc for \u201ckey workers\u201d, particularly NHS workers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 230 of the homes would be built on the Dagenham side of the site.\n<\/p>\n
\n The proposals also include a supermarket, a lakeside community space or cafe, and a \u201cgreen\u201d foot and cycle path through the site.\n<\/p>\n
\n Homes For Life will still need secure planning permission from both councils before the sale can go ahead.\n<\/p>\n
\n Dominic Twomey (Image: Barking and Dagenham Council)\n<\/p>\n
\n Cameron Geddes, responsible for regeneration at Barking and Dagenham, told the cabinet he \u201ctotally supports\u201d the sale.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said the development could \u201cbring a lot of families off of the housing waiting list\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Geddes said: \u201cWe work with most developers, we struggle to get more than about 10pc of properties at social housing levels.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf we can get 60pc here for ourselves and our colleagues in Havering this will really bring a lot of families off the housing waiting list.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Geddes also warned that planning law could be an obstacle to the development if the golf course was considered to be green belt land.\n<\/p>\n
\n But he said the development would open up the green space to more people.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cFor all of golf\u2019s many merits it is a sport that cannot cater for a lot of people for obvious reasons simultaneously unless you get a golf ball bounced off your head.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSo the potential here to actually enlarge people\u2019s access to green fields and green belt land is considerable.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The council is keeping the proposed sale price confidential. But it says it receives just \u00a32,242 a year in rent from the golf club.\n<\/p>\n
\n It says the level of rent it receives is \u201cbased upon the annual turnover of the golf course\u201d under the terms of the lease agreed in 2000.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Twomey told the LDRS he didn\u2019t know why the agreement signed in 2000 allowed for such a low level of rent.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cNot being around, I don\u2019t know the process of agreement that got there.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt seems remarkably low even for 2000. What I do know is the benefits of selling that bit of land will outweigh not selling it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barking and Dagenham cabinet members agreed on October 14 to sell Crowlands Heath Golf Course to a company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-222017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}