Hythe Imperial: Come for the Spa, Stay for the Housing Estate

This is a satirical take on planning application 26/1290/FH. All conversations and scenarios are fictional.

There are, broadly speaking, three ways of improving a golf course.

You can improve the greens.

You can improve the clubhouse.

Or you can build 291 houses on part of it and call the whole thing an enhancement.

Welcome to planning.

The Hythe Imperial has stood beside the sea for generations, looking out across Hythe with the calm confidence of a building that has survived two world wars, several economic crises, generations of golfers and, perhaps most impressively of all, British hotel breakfasts.

Now its owner, Darrell Healey, and architect Guy Holloway have plans.

Quite a lot of plans, as it happens.

There is the hotel.

There is the golf course.

There is a spa.

There is a gym.

There is a swimming pool.

There is a new clubhouse.

There is a golf academy.

There is adventure golf.

There is a splash park.

There is landscaping.

There are new hotel facilities.

And there are up to 291 homes.

It is less a planning application than the contents page of a leisure brochure written by someone who suddenly remembered, on page 47, that they also wanted to build a housing estate.

One imagines the conversation beginning quietly.

Darrell is standing on the Imperial golf course, arms spread wide, looking back towards the hotel.

Guy Holloway joins him.

“Lovely view,” says Guy.

“Very,” says Darrell.

A thoughtful silence follows.

Architects like thoughtful silences.

They give the countryside time to enjoy itself.

“What do you see?” asks Darrell.

Guy looks across the grass.

“Potential.”

“No, I mean what do you actually see?”

“More potential.”

And from that moment the golf course’s days of being merely a golf course were probably numbered.

This is one of the great mysteries of modern Britain.

Nobody in property development has ever looked at an empty field and thought:

“That seems fine.”

Where ordinary people see grass, architects see massing.

Where dogs see somewhere to run, consultants see a development parcel.

Where golfers see the sixth fairway, someone somewhere is already wondering whether it might accommodate thirty-two executive homes and a sustainable drainage pond.

The trick, of course, is presentation.

You do not stroll into a planning meeting and say:

“Good morning. We’d like to build up to 291 houses on part of a golf course.”

That is far too alarming.

People might start paying attention.

Instead, you begin gently.

You mention wellbeing.

Everybody likes wellbeing.

Then you mention a spa.

Even better.

Then a swimming pool.

Lovely.

A gym.

Excellent.

A golf academy.

Splendid.

Adventure golf.

Wonderful.

A splash park.

By now everyone is picturing happy children, healthy pensioners and possibly a man called Roger improving his backswing.

Only then, very quietly, while everyone is mentally wearing a dressing gown and slippers, do you add:

“…and up to 291 homes.”

Sorry?

Did somebody say houses?

No, no.

You must have misheard.

We were discussing wellbeing.

This is the planning equivalent of hiding a rhinoceros behind a pot plant.

“What’s that enormous grey thing?”

“Landscaping.”

“It has a horn.”

“Biodiversity enhancement.”

“It just ate the planning officer’s notebook.”

“Community engagement.”

You have to admire it.

The proposal is not shy.

Most planning applications bring one thing to the party.

A block of flats.

A supermarket.

A warehouse.

This one has arrived carrying enough activities to fill an entire wet weekend.

Golf.

Swimming.

Gym.

Spa.

Adventure golf.

Splash park.

Hotel.

Housing.

If they added falconry and pottery classes, the council could grant permission simply on the grounds that nobody had the strength left to read the appendices.

The phrase “adventure golf” is particularly wonderful.

Normal golf, apparently, no longer has sufficient peril.

Golfers have been wandering around for centuries thinking:

“This is pleasant, but where is the jeopardy?”

At last, Hythe may have the answer.

Perhaps the windmill moves.

Perhaps the bunker contains crocodiles.

Perhaps the final hole involves getting a planning application through Folkestone and Hythe District Council.

Now that really would be adventure golf.

The golf academy is clever too.

Everything sounds more virtuous once you put “academy” after it.

Golf course: somewhere people hit balls.

Golf academy: skills development.

Café: somewhere you buy tea.

Hospitality academy: economic regeneration.

Outdoor Construction Academy: £2.7 million capital investment.

Britain could solve half its planning disputes by renaming things.

The proposed homes could become a Residential Living Academy.

The car park could be the Sustainable Motoring Hub.

The bins could be the Circular Economy Pavilion.

Nobody could possibly object.

Then there is the Hythe Imperial itself.

The word “Imperial” has always carried a certain ambition.

Empires, after all, are not famous for sitting quietly within their existing boundaries.

No Roman emperor ever stared across an empty field and said:

“Actually, I think we’ve got enough.”

They expanded.

They improved connectivity.

They delivered strategic infrastructure.

Then one morning the locals woke up and discovered there was an aqueduct through the back garden and Gaul had become a mixed-use development.

One can almost hear the Roman planning statement:

“The proposal represents a high-quality, landscape-led expansion of the existing empire, providing improved transport links, public baths and enhanced opportunities for chariot-based mobility.”

Objections from the Gauls would be carefully considered.

Then conquered.

Architecture has also developed its own wonderful language for these moments.

Buildings no longer stand next to other buildings.

They “respond to context”.

They do not loom.

They “create a strong architectural presence”.

They do not block views.

They “frame vistas”.

They do not make neighbours wonder what on earth has happened.

They “establish a new visual relationship with the surrounding townscape”.

If an architect ever described a building simply as “quite big”, the Royal Institute of British Architects would probably send somebody round.

Guy Holloway therefore faces a noble professional challenge.

How do you add a large collection of new things to a historic seaside hotel while explaining that everything remains deeply respectful of what was there before?

Architects have been solving this problem for years.

It is called a design statement.

The general rule is simple.

Anything old is “heritage”.

Anything new is “contemporary”.

Anything very new is “bold”.

Anything very large is “confident”.

Anything the neighbours can see is “a landmark”.

And anything they cannot see because another building is in the way is “carefully screened”.

The golf course presents another difficulty.

Golf courses are terribly inefficient things from a developer’s point of view.

Acres and acres of land occupied by grass.

Not even particularly ambitious grass.

No balconies.

No kitchens.

No parking spaces.

No service charges.

A fairway can sit there for a hundred years without producing a single two-bedroom apartment.

It is a scandal.

Imagine explaining that to an investor.

“So what does this hectare do?”

“Golf.”

“And the revenue?”

“Someone occasionally walks across it wearing checked trousers.”

“Good Lord.”

Hence the modern miracle known as rationalisation.

Some of the golf remains golf.

That proves golf has been protected.

Some becomes other things.

That proves the site has been improved.

Then you add academy golf and adventure golf.

That proves there is arguably more golf than before, provided nobody asks how many acres are involved.

It is brilliant.

By the same logic, you could demolish Wembley Stadium, retain the centre circle, add a Subbuteo table and announce enhanced football provision.

Then there are the 291 homes.

Or, more precisely, “up to” 291 homes.

Planning people love “up to”.

“Up to” is one of the most soothing expressions in the English language.

Up to 50 per cent off.

Up to eight hours’ battery life.

Up to 291 houses.

It carries the comforting suggestion that perhaps there might only be three.

Nobody ever says “up to” when discussing something unpleasant.

The dentist never says:

“This may involve up to four hours of drilling.”

HMRC never writes:

“You owe us up to £17,000.”

But put “up to” before housing and suddenly 291 begins to feel almost hypothetical.

They are quantum houses.

They exist and do not exist simultaneously.

Particularly because the housing element is outline.

Much of the detail comes later.

So the houses are there in principle.

Their detailed appearance is not.

It is Schrödinger’s housing estate.

Until somebody opens the reserved-matters application, the homes exist in a mysterious state in which they are both beautifully designed and not actually designed yet.

“What will they look like?”

“That comes later.”

“How high will they be?”

“Later.”

“What are we agreeing to now?”

“The principle.”

“What does the principle look like?”

“Up to 291 houses.”

“And what will those look like?”

“Later.”

At this point the planning system eats its own tail and disappears into a small black hole somewhere behind the committee room.

None of this, of course, tells us whether the application ought to be approved.

That is what consultation, scrutiny and the planning process are supposed to determine.

There may be genuine benefits.

There may be genuine concerns.

There will certainly be documents.

Good heavens, there will be documents.

Transport documents.

Landscape documents.

Design documents.

Ecology documents.

Heritage documents.

Drainage documents.

Documents explaining other documents.

Possibly a document explaining why the document explaining the documents was necessary.

By the time anybody reaches the end, the splash park may have acquired listed-building status.

But underneath all the professional language, all the drawings, all the assessments, all the architectural flourishes and all the reassuring talk of enhancement lies a wonderfully simple proposition.

There is a hotel.

There is a golf course.

There is land.

Darrell Healey would like to do rather more with it.

Guy Holloway has drawn rather more on it.

And somewhere, buried beneath the spa, swimming pool, gym, golf academy, adventure golf, splash park, landscaping and assorted improvements, are up to 291 homes quietly trying not to attract attention.

Which is perhaps the cleverest trick of all.

Because by the time you notice them, you are already wearing the bathrobe.

The Shepway Vox Team

Deliciously Different Dissent