A CLUBHOUSE and function room at Silsden Golf Club – built and mostly paid for with National Lottery cash – may now be turned into an exclusive four-bedroom bungalow.

The clubhouse on the 50-acre 18-hole course at Brunthwaite was built in 2001 with the aid of a £670,000 National Lottery grant, while the club stumped up some £200,000.

It was hoped the function room would generate a healthy income, but this did not happen, and instead the club became mired in debt as it struggled to repay loans.

Members saved the club last August by agreeing to sell the whole site in a deal that would provide a five-year lease on the course and use of a smaller building as a members’ bar.

While that deal has still not been formally signed, an application to turn the single-storey building into a bungalow has now been submitted to Bradford Council.

The proposal is to ‘re-position’ residential accommodation from the two-storey smaller building – once a two-bedroom flat for the golf club’s steward – into the bigger, converted clubhouse.

“The conversion will involve removing the existing male and female changing rooms, together with the bars, function room, meeting room and office areas,” states the application.

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“These areas will be used to form a living room area, dining and kitchen area and four bedrooms.

“The existing semi-circular conservatory on the south elevation will be retained.

“The conversion will meet the client’s requirement for spacious family accommodation with large areas for entertaining.”

Dry stone walls would be built to ring the new bungalow and separate it from the golf club’s small building, which would be re-fitted upstairs with fresh facilities to be shared by the club’s some 130 members.

Golf club secretary, Tom Starkie, said plans to sell the club did not depend on it gaining planning permission for the proposed residential redevelopment.

“This has all moved slower than we had hoped as there’s had to be a lot of dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s due to all the parties involved,” he said.

“We had hoped to have completed everything by Christmas.

“The sale is not conditional on planning permission.

“We want to have a good relationship with our new neighbour and just want to carry on playing golf up there.”

Craven ward district councillor, Andrew Mallinson, said Bradford planners would have to look hard at implications for the future.

“This is greenbelt and it was only ever intended to be an open space for recreational not residential use,” he said.

Cllr Adrian Naylor had also welcomed initial news the club had struck a lifesaving deal, but said as a member of the Keighley and Shipley Area Planning Panel, he could not comment on specific cases.

However, he added the panel always scrutinised any proposed changes to greenbelt sites very carefully.