Scottish golf club members making huge change to stop closure threat

With the vultures circling around public golf courses in Scotland, members at one club have decided to take matters into their own hands.

Cherished municipals continue to face uncertain futures – none more so than Caird Park, the last remaining public course in Dundee that has now been recommended for closure.

The lack of public investment has left club officials scrambling for alternative solutions to preserve their long-term financial futures.

And at Winterfield Golf Club in Dunbar, that involves taking their own grip on the problem.

• Popular Scottish golf course to be taken over by members

• Scottish golf courses could be saved from controversial closure

Members at Winterfield’s glorious par-68 links course have struck a deal with the East Lothian council to run the business themselves, taking control of day-to-day operations from April 2025.

“Just over two years ago we started to think, the situation councils are in, they were not spending any money on the club and they were cutting back what they were spending on the course,” the Winterfield men’s captain William Daisley tells bunkered.co.uk.

“Our greenkeepers worked for the council. We had no control of what our greenkeepers did on the course. We could ask but if they didn’t want to, they didn’t. Some of the problem was they couldn’t do it because the council wasn’t giving them any money to spend on the course.

“If they’re not spending money… you hear about swimming pools and various other things getting closed down. We started to think ‘can we do this?'”

And so they did.

After an overwhelming majority of members – 321 against only eight – decided they want to take on the running of the golf club, Winterfield agreed on a 40-year lease to seize control of the course and its clubhouse, which is owned by the Dunbar Common Good Fund.

“It was a combination of what’s coming in the future under the council – and we would always have liked more control of what we wanted to do,” Daisley explains.

“Within our executive committee we’ve formed a subcommittee to look after all this. We’ve been together for a year now.”

The members at Winterfield are under no illusions about the task at hand. An experienced team has been formed of members who have worked at the council, banks and even the inland revenue.

That expertise, Daisley says, has been crucial in plans to set up two new businesses running the club as they look to plough as much money as possible into the clubhouse and the course.

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• Scottish golf courses could be saved from controversial closure

And it’s Winterfield’s long neglected clubhouse where a huge amount of the groundwork will need to take place.

“To be fair to the council, they’ve just completed a full survey of the building,” Daisley adds. “It’s a nice old building but the work is looking like something along the lines of £700,000 to £800,000 to renovate.

“But if we go back a year and a half ago, part of the 40-year lease was that we negotiated a rent free period of five years. What the council said is, if we don’t take rent off you, you must then plough that money into the building.

“The upshot is since the survey was done on the building, we’ve now upped the rent-free period to a minimum ten years. Instead of paying rent we will be putting the rent news into the building. It’s great news. The rent is in the region of £30,000 a year. That’s £300,000 we have to spend on the building.

“Within our five year plan which was published today to the members, we’ve got a normal day-to-day business. We’ll be putting so much into the course, the club. The machinery that the council has on the course at the minute, we’re keeping.

“So they’re donating all the machinery and they’ve guaranteed us one year of free maintenance on the equipment to give us a chance to get somebody else. We’re not having to buy or lease any of the greens equipment. The council have been fantastic, they really have.”

The East Lothian council’s benevolence is already making this a smoother transition than it might have been for members at Winterfield.

“The main benefit is we’ve got a guarantee of a 40-year lease,” Daisley stresses. “Unless we get into trouble, the course is going to be open for the next 40 years. That’s guaranteed.”

Such certainty is a rare blessing in this increasingly precarious landscape.

Ben Parsons joined bunkered as a Content Producer in 2023 and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.