Planning Permission for floodlit range?

[barrybridges]

I'm a gym member at Chartham Park and soon to be adding golf membership to that as well.

They have an outdoors range (let's call it a field and be generous) there which I regularly practice on, but in the winter it's normally unavailable to anyone who works office hours because it's dark by the time you can get there.

I asked the pro why they didn't consider putting floodlights in and he said that they had been trying to get planning permission for 10 years but hadn't been successful.

Now, I'm struggling to understand what the issues might be? Basically, Chartham Park is in the middle of nowhere and I can't see how floodlights might cause a problem to any residents as none are within the vicinity. For golfers though, it's so frustrating: the nearest floodlit ranges are all the way over in Hilden (16 miles) or Redhill (8 miles) and there is nothing else despite there being a tonne of courses in the area.

Being quite pro-active, I wondered if there's anything that the humble golfer might be able to do about it; I can't understand why in 10 years it hasn't been possible to get planning permission. Could the members lobby the club? Or lobby the council? What might the problem be?

 

[birdieman]

Brown envelope?

Seriously no-one can understand anything planners do, maybe the planning application needs to be more thorough in terms of green energy i.e could solar panels or wind turbines be installed to power the flood lights, facility could be used by kids for free during school hours for coaching etc. They could sell the fact it's activity for people in the winter helping general health of the population i.e get them out of the pub!

Might be possible they need to push things a bit harder or have a good look at why the application has been turned down so often and work from there. If floodlit golf ranges are acceptable everywhere else it's difficult to understand what the issue is here.

 

[bobmac]

Is there a flight path nearby?

 

[Oddsocks]

close to gatwick bob

 

[bobmac]

By the way Barry, we can see from your picture you're really Peter Jones.
Nice to have a dragon on board

 

[CliveW]

Perhaps this is an excuse. The cost of installing and running lights at a golf range is horrendous. It could be the electricity supply is not good enough for the power needed, but it could also be that the projected income from the numbers expected to use the range when lit will not justify the cost of running them.
There could also be issues with lights close to roads etc. We had difficulty because of that but that was in the 1980s.

 

[Toby_LeRhone]

I practice in the dark regularly. Love it. For some strange reason (that I understand but wont explain here) I am more accurate when I cant see the target. Get a head torch.

Light polution is a tricky thing. Planning committees have to consider the affect on gross light emissions from the entire community and not only the immediate and direct effect from one particular light source.

 

[barrybridges]

There is a flight path nearby, but not really that close. It can't be a problem because Redhill is closer and it's right under the Gatwick flightpath and they still use floodlights.

I suspect it's just a lie designed to make the golf more appealing to members, but it's a bit disappointing. Then again maybe this is a business opportunity, which is even more frustrating; there must be thousands of golfers around the East Grinstead/Crawley/Godstone/Lingfield area who would want to use a decent range in the evening without having to go to either Redhill or Hilden, surely?

 

[barrybridges]

By the way Barry, we can see from your picture you're really Peter Jones.
Nice to have a dragon on board

And for that reason, I'm out!