Plans to create a driving range facility at Caird Park golf course were labelled a “political priority” due to the negative publicity surrounding the Camperdown closure.
In August 2019, the SNP administration of Dundee City Council voted to shutter the golf course at Camperdown Park in a bid to save almost £400,000 a year in subsidies.
The decision proved to be controversial and hundreds of people signed a petition opposing its closure.
Camperdown Golf Course officially closed in April 2020.
Plans drawn up
However, to compensate for its loss, the council had committed to building a new driving range at Caird Park instead.
But it never materialised, with culture chiefs blaming the global pandemic.
Documents obtained by The Courier now reveal bosses at Leisure and Culture Dundee (LACD) – running Caird Park golf course on behalf of the council – discussed the driving range proposals a month prior to the Camperdown decision.
Minutes from a meeting of the LACD capital projects board held in July 2019 said the “proposals to concentrate the golf offer” in Caird Park increased the “importance of delivering the project in 2020”.
The report, revealed after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from The Courier, went on to say that plans already drawn up would be tested by an architect to provide an independent expert view for the council and board.
Subject to this advice, a report was expected to go before the local authority seeking approval to “progress at the earliest opportunity”.
Minutes from a capital board meeting held two months later reveal further discussions had been held on how best to create the driving range.
These included the possibility of re-profiling the Caird Park course, starting on the 16th tee, and building the driving range on the nine-hole course.
It was at this meeting that LACD chiefs “raised the political priority now attached to delivering the golf driving range in light of the publicity surrounding the closure of Camperdown and the commitments made by the administration”.
It was subsequently agreed the project would receive priority.
At November’s capital budget meeting, LACD bosses confirmed an option had been chosen which they “expected to see implemented as quickly as possible”.
The cost of the project was estimated to be £1.6 million.
Caird Park golf course set to close next month
But all capital projects from Leisure and Culture Dundee were put on hold in the wake of Covid-19 in 2020.
The last time the driving range project appears to have been mentioned by LACD in official minutes is January 2022, with information regarding its status redacted.
Last December councillors voted to close Caird Park golf course in a money-saving move.
LACD chief Judy Dobbie, speaking at the committee meeting when the decision was made, said plans for the range had been “far on” before the pandemic.
Caird Park golf course is scheduled to shut in April, leaving Dundee with no municipal golf course.
A last-ditch attempt was made to save the facility by the Liberal Democrat group on Dundee City Council.
However, this failed to receive support from the other political parties.
Group leader Councillor Fraser Macpherson said: “Many of us opposed the original closure of Camperdown.
“What we said would be the bad outcome of that has come to pass.
“It’s very disappointing that just a few short years later, Caird Park golf course has been thrown away as well.
“The commitments given are not worth the paper they are printed on.”
Conversation