THE letter from Richard Knight, planning director of Peel Land and Property (August 3), gives some interesting insights into the Hulton Park Golf Course.

Mr Knight talks about the sustainable and transformational project through the restoration of an historic park.

The cost of the investment is £250 million. He believes that “Bolton is open to investment” and then goes on to say that “the housing element is critical as it funds the golf project”.

What this is actually saying is that the golf course is not financially viable in itself and the housing cross-subsidises the golf course.

Would you want to buy a quality detached home if you knew that the price was funding a vanity project totally separate from your house?

Let’s be under no illusion. The restoration of the heritage site is of no benefit to the ordinary people of Over Hulton or Westhoughton.

This will be private land and you will have no access to us unless you are a paying customer of the championship golf course or the four-star hotel.

The only public access is on the Hulton Trail, which is a screened-off footpath around the perimeter of the site.

A lot of local people have a great interest in building the relief road. The plan put up by Peel shows a short road only from Platt Lane to Chequerbent roundabout, which does not relieve traffic on Leigh Road and Park Road.

This isn’t Peel’s road; it would be Bolton Council’s responsibility to build it. The traffic flow and queueing calculations presented in the submission are based on several assumptions which minimise the expected amount of traffic from the development.

If you don’t believe that Peel’s traffic assumptions are minimal, have a look at its Residential Travel Plan. This assumes that all the people living in these high-quality detached houses will not have a typical two or even three cars, but will be making most of their journeys by bus, walking the children to school and the doctor’s or cycling on Bolton’s highly dangerous discontinuous cycle lanes.

The housing developer will even be employing a Travel Plan Co-ordinator who will be dropping in on residents to create a “personalised travel plan”, in other words, to persuade them to use the bus.

I have yet to meet anyone, golfer or resident, who has the slightest belief that Hulton Park will win the Ryder Cup in 2026.

This is a vanity project and, as Peel has stated in multiple places, is not financially viable in its own right.

It needs the building of nearly 1,000 high-quality detached homes, plus some apartments on the edge of green belt land, to fund the project.

The future house buyers will have to make an unwitting financial contribution to the building of the golf course.

The people of Westhoughton will gain no benefit from the project, but will suffer increased congestion and strain on school and medical facilities.

In whose interest is it for this golf course to go ahead?

Phil Wood

Westhoughton