Exeter City Council has approved the construction of 54 more dwellings in the Topsham gap on the former Topsham Golf Academy driving range after previously approving plans which enabled the relocation of the driving range to privately-owned land in Ludwell Valley Park.
The approval will extend Berkeley Park, a development of 61 luxury dwellings in Exeter Road that was approved by the city council in 2021 before another seven dwellings were added later the same year.
The 4.7 acre driving range site sits at the centre of a triangle of land between Exeter Road and Newcourt Road which also contains Topsham Rugby Football Club, Topsham St James Cricket Club and the University of Exeter’s Topsham Sports Ground.
Former Topsham Golf Academy driving range. Image: Exeter City Council.
Developer Heritage Homes applied for full planning permission to build a mix of detached, semi-detached and terraced luxury homes on the former driving range in July last year, subsequently submitting a series of design amendments.
It is also responsible for other Topsham gap developments including The Chase, 50 dwellings to the south of Exeter Road, and Lyden Place, 30 dwellings north of Newcourt Road.
Its Berkeley Park extension was approved unanimously at last week’s council planning committee meeting.
Berkeley Park extension site layout. Image: Heritage Homes.
The development follows the council’s 2023 approval of plans enabling Exeter Golf and Country Club to close Topsham Golf Academy driving range and construct a replacement facility, Exeter Golf Academy and Driving Range, on seventeen acres of privately-owned land in Ludwell Valley Park.
The club’s application to build the new range prompted a total of 416 public comments of which 345 were objections. Many of the application’s 71 supporters said they were golf club users or members.
The plans, which included the construction of a building and car park, were brought before the council’s May 2023 planning committee meeting.
Steered by officers to defer rather than reject the application outright, the committee considered it again the following month when seven of its eleven members voted in its favour.
Privately-owned land in Ludwell Valley Park before construction of new golf driving range.
Image: Mackenzie & Ebert.
In October last year Exeter Golf and Country Club then sought to vary the approval to use recycled plastic cell gravel for the new driving range car park surface material instead of grasscrete.
Grasscrete had originally – and controversially – been specified by the council because of its resemblance to grass in long-distance valley park views.
The club said that weather conditions in late 2023 and early 2024 had affected grass conditions and it was then the “wrong time of year” to establish a grasscrete surface.
The council planning committee refused the variation in December 2024 for reasons which included “negative impact on the character and local distinctiveness of Ludwell Valley Park”.
However a planning inspector found, in determining a successful appeal brought by the club against the committee’s decision, that the change of car park material would not harm the character or appearance of the area.
The Topsham gap was a swathe of undeveloped rural land which once separated Topsham from Exeter. Many considered the separation essential to the preservation of Topsham’s distinct character.
A council officer told last week’s planning committee that – despite Exeter Local Plan policies intended to protect it from development – several planning application refusals there had been overturned at appeal with the result that “a lot of what was Topsham gap has been lost to housing”.
