Leicestershire Golf Club’s Land Sale Will Protect Green Wedge
Leicestershire Golf Club’s president, Ashwin Mistry, has defended the club’s proposal to sell a small parcel of land, insisting the move is intended to secure the future of the golf course rather than open the door to further development.
In an interview, Mr Mistry outlined a combination of pressures facing the club, including rising operating costs, the legacy of Covid, expensive repairs to its clubhouse and growing concerns over water supplies. The current clubhouse at The Leicestershire Golf Club was built in 1965 and officially opened on 11 December 1967. It was designed by the Leicester architectural practice Pick, Everard, Keay & Gimson in a distinctive modernist style.
Recent restrictions on water abstraction from the brook running through the course have reduced the period and volume of water the club can take. Ageing irrigation pipes, inadequate storage and water-quality issues have added to the challenge, prompting costly plans for new storage ponds and improvements to the irrigation system.
Mr Mistry said proceeds from the proposed land sale would help reduce borrowing and fund these improvements. He argued that sacrificing a small area of land could help protect the remaining golf course, which he said the club had no intention of selling. Asked whether further land might be sold if financial pressures returned, he was unequivocal: “One hundred percent no! You can quote me on that.” he said.
Despite the challenges, Mr Mistry rejected any suggestion that the club was in decline. He said 110 new members joined between May 2025 and May 2026, around 70 per cent of them under 40, while bookings by golf societies had also increased. The club’s planning application was rejected in March 2026, and developers have since lodged an appeal which is scheduled for 13 January 2027.
The debate leaves a central question for the community, whether the proposed development represents a necessary one-off sacrifice to safeguard the golf club’s 140 acres for the foreseeable future, and thereby protecting the designated green wedge, or risk the club going into decline with the chance of closure and at least some of the land being sold for house building.
As pointed out in two on- line Echo articles on the subject in March 2026, if the club fails, the risk of the whole site being developed is unlikely, however there will probably be building around the periphery, thereby eating into the existing estate.
To grant permission for a much-needed nursing home on an unused plot of land at the corner of Gartree Road and Stoughton Drive does not open the floodgates, as such exceptions are permitted under planning rules and any further speculative planning applications would be seen and treated as a completely separate matter by the planning authority.
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