A huge housing development at a former golf course in Caversham is set to be expanded with a total of nearly 300 new homes.
The Emmer Green Drive housing development is currently being constructed at the former Reading Golf Course site off Kidmore End Road in Emmer Green.
Once complete, it will provide 223 new homes for people in Caversham.
Now developers want to add 70 new homes to the estate on land north of the current Emmer Green Drive site, with the development as a whole totalling 293 homes if given the go-ahead.
The land was briefly home to Fairways Family Golf, which provided a nine-hole course, disc golf and foot golf when it opened in May 2021.
Despite a petition calling for the family golf course to be saved being signed by 952 people, Fairways was permanently closed last February.
The closure of Fairways clears the way for the developers to add 70 homes to the estate, with 40 per cent of these homes being designated affordable.
The plans have been by Fairfax Acquisitions, which secured planning permission to build homes on the golf course despite the project receiving more than 4,000 objections in March 2022.
The planning permission was then sold to Vistry Thames Valley, a consortium of housebuilders made up of Bovis Homes, Linden Homes and the housing association Abri.
Early designs of the project show the homes being contained in a mix of detached, semi-detached and terraced houses.
These new homes would be accessed from the new roads created by the Emmer Green Drive development, with entry and exit from the existing junction with Kidmore End Road.
Stated benefits include providing new publicly accessible green spaces and a play area, provision of electric vehicle charging points and achieving a 25 per cent biodiversity net gain.
Fairfax is engaging in a pre-application consultation process ahead of a planning application being submitted.
Neighbours are invited to take part in the consultation by emailing mail@your-feedback.co.uk, completing the feedback form on rgc.your-feedback.co.uk or calling 0800 099 6712.
The deadline for consultation responses is Sunday, April 13.
The site is within South Oxfordshire District Council’s jurisdiction, as it sits just north of the borough boundary.
Another of the stated benefits is that it would help the district council meet housing targets set by the ministry of housing, communities and local government.
South Oxfordshire’s target doubled from 579 to 1,179 new homes to be built per year, a 104 per cent increase.
Reading Borough Council has acknowledged the project in a report on its Local Plan Partial-Update from October last year.
Although any decision would be made by South Oxfordshire District Council’s planning department, Reading Borough would be consulted on the impacts any future development may have.
