Development Update: January 2019

Since our last club development update, the Board of TWRFC have invited a sub-committee formed of club experts in the building, legal and land development areas, to look at the progress achieved on this topic to date. In doing so they have reviewed all of the key documents, advice received and the various approaches made to us.

The group comprises three club members who work close to or in the development field and are: Jim Hendley (Life VP), Mike Vos (VP) and Richard Baines (Member).

This group spent some weeks carrying out a detailed analysis and presented their findings to the January Board meeting. In summary and following this presentation the Board has determined that any future domestic development or land swaps are likely to take a number of years. This is because of the legal complexities around split ground ownership, split planning authorities (Tunbridge Wells and Wealden) and the current development environment in our area of the town as well as the difficulty in obtaining ownership of a suitable land swap site through developers financing.

Given this assessment it has been concluded that the likely time scale for any major change to this assessment is probably 10 years plus as a minimum.

As a result the Board has now determined to ask the group to look at options for developing St Marks.within the 10 year timescale.

In drawing up such plans we have asked them to address the various areas we see as priorities (in no particular order):

    Increasing the parking availability

    Extending the Club room on the first floor of the clubhouse.

    Improving the drainage to pitches two and three (to the same standard as Pitch one).

We have also started to look beyond the clubs present boundaries to potentially solve some of these challenges as site capacity may become a greater challenge to the youth section as it continues to grow.

Finally, and longer term, once we have acquired or leased further land we have asked the Sub –committee to look at the potential for developing the current fourth pitch next to the Cala homes development. This will be looked at in conjunction with the Board who will examine the potential for grant and self funding as well as prudent loans for these projects.

As things progress we will continue to update you and will ensure that this topic is included on the Agenda for the 2019 TWRFC Ltd. AGM ( provisionally fixed for Monday 24th June 2019).

Roger Clarke
TWRFC President

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