A Wirral golf club which closed in April, 87 years after it first opened, could be revived.
Brackenwood Golf Course, in Bebington, Wirral, closed on April 1 after Wirral Council withdrew support for it, along with Hoylake Municipal, in order to save £328,000 of the £20m it needed to save to balance its budget. Following the closure, the site faced vandalism on a scale never seen before, with marker posts being pulled out and dragged into the pond, and a fire breaking out on the course.
In March, Jackie Watts, secretary of the ladies section at the club, expressed her disappointment at the move to shut Brackenwood. She told the ECHO : “The course means a heck of a lot, we’ve been here since 1935. We have very strong men's and ladies' sections.
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“A lot of people are playing into their late eighties. It’s incredible that the council is closing it, it’s the jewel in the municipal crown.”
But bids to revive the course and reopen it from two companies, Special Ventures Partnership and Love Golf MCR, are set to be approved and taken forward to the next stage by councillors at a meeting of Wirral Council’s Tourism and Leisure Committee on June 16. Both operators want to run Brackenwood as an 18-hole course on a not-for-profit basis.
A document prepared for the meeting read: “The primary community benefits will come from the golf offer although there will be some ancillary benefits from walking and using some of the spaces on the course for community areas. As both expressions of interest scored highly, it is recommended that both are taken forward into the business planning stage.”
It is important to point out this does not mean there are any guarantees the course will be saved. Wirral Council will still have to approve a business case from one of the two bidders if Brackenwood is to reopen and that will require them to show they can run the course sustainably.
