Ferndown golf hotel out of bounds for green belt site (From Thisisdorset)

Ferndown golf hotel out of bounds for green belt site

7:00am Wednesday 5th November 2008

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PLANS for a 30-bedroom hotel at a golf course in Ferndown have been given the thumbs- down.

But agents for the Dudsbury Golf Club have vowed to fight on, pledging to submit revised plans for a smaller hotel, perhaps within a matter of days.

Councillors on East Dorset District Council’s planning committee voted by seven to six against proposals for a 450 square metre extension to the Christchurch Road club house.

Cllr Ann Warman told her fellow committee members that the plans contravened everything she knew about the protection of green belt land.

“This goes against everything we have supported in the green belt in the past, and will set a precedent,” she warned.

Committee chairman Cllr Mike Dyer exercised his right to vote, telling councillors the proposals had significance for the protection of East Dorset’s green belt.

But many councillors spoke in favour of the application, arguing that, by allowing the club to diversify, they would be supporting the district’s economy.

Proposals for a new lounge and bar, a spa, treatment rooms, showers and saunas, and a two-storey extension to the front of the club house were made alongside that for the hotel.

The Mayor of Ferndown, Cllr Lesley Dedman, addressed the meeting as a designated public speaker, telling committee members the town council had backed the application. Ferndown people, and businesses on the town’s expanding industrial estate, had been without a hotel for four years since the closure of the DeVere Dormy, said Mrs Dedman, and were in need of a facility to accommodate visitors.

Speaking after the meeting, John Montgomery, the club’s agent, told the Daily Echo that revised plans would soon be submitted.

Permission had already been granted for the development of holiday cottages, said Mr Montgomery, and plans for a smaller hotel would match the area allocated for the cottages.

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