507 Homes on Sunbury Golf Club, Shepperton: 7 Oct Deadline

Residents have until Wednesday 7 October to comment on an outline application for up to 507 homes on Sunbury Golf Club at Charlton Lane, Shepperton, about four miles south-east of Staines.

The application is 26/00822/OUT. Spelthorne Borough Council received it on 5 August, validated it on 11 September, and advertised it in the press and by letter on 16 September. The determination deadline is 1 January 2027. The whole site sits in the Green Belt, which the council’s constraints record confirms.

We have read the application pack rather than the coverage of it. Three things in the developer’s own documents have not been reported anywhere, and each of them matters more than the headline number.

What is actually proposed

The 21.46 hectare site, 53.03 acres, would take:

• up to 507 homes, of which the indicative schedule puts 253 as affordable and 254 for sale
• a care home of up to 3,230 square metres and 75 beds
• a medical centre of up to 650 square metres
• a network of new roads, cycle and car parking, public open space and drainage

Only 10.17 hectares of the site would be built on. The golf course is not closing: the application keeps a 12-hole course and the driving range, and the developer’s own planning statement counts the change as a “net loss of 15 standard golf holes”.

The mix, from the indicative accommodation schedule, is 74 one-bedroom homes (14.6 per cent), 178 two-bedroom (35.1), 191 three-bedroom (37.7) and 64 four-bedroom (12.6).

All matters are reserved except access. That means the layout, scale, appearance and landscaping shown in the illustrative plans are not what would be approved. Only the principle and the access points would be.

The council’s own study scored the site 5 out of 5 for stopping a merger

This is the finding that should frame everything else, and it is printed in the developer’s own planning statement.

Spelthorne commissioned Arup to assess its Green Belt in 2017. The golf course was assessed as Local Area 47 and scored against the five statutory Green Belt purposes:

• Purpose A, checking unrestricted sprawl: 0 out of 5
• Purpose B, preventing neighbouring towns merging into one another: 5 out of 5
• Purpose C, safeguarding the countryside from encroachment: 3 out of 5
• Purpose D, preserving the setting of historic towns: 0 out of 5

The assessment concluded the site performed “strongly” overall, and on Purpose B it found the land formed “almost all of the essential gap between Shepperton and Upper Halliford”, and that developing it would lead to coalescence. On that evidence the council never took the site forward to a Stage 2 or Stage 3 assessment.

The applicant’s answer is that the site is grey belt. Under paragraph 155 of the National Planning Policy Framework, development on grey belt land is not automatically inappropriate if four tests are met. The planning statement argues all four are, and says the remaining Green Belt would still separate Shepperton from Sunbury-on-Thames because the site is bounded by the A244 to the east, the railway to the west and the River Ash corridor to the south.

The advice note the council wrote, now quoted back at it

The second finding is how the applicant gets there.

On 17 July 2025, Spelthorne’s Environment and Sustainability Committee adopted a Grey Belt Planning Advice Note to guide its own officers and planning committee. It was not put out to public consultation, a point the applicant’s own statement concedes, saying the note therefore carries “limited weight”.

The applicant then quotes four paragraphs of it in support of the scheme:

• paragraph 3.15, that Shepperton is not a “large built-up area” given its compact and relatively isolated character
• paragraphs 3.17 and 3.18, that Purpose B assessments must carefully define what counts as a “town”, given Spelthorne’s patchwork settlement pattern
• paragraph 3.19, which fixes the borough’s town boundaries as Ashford, Shepperton, Staines, Stanwell and Sunbury
• paragraph 4.12, that sites within 250 metres of the urban area are the most sustainable locations for development

The note also accepts that the Arup assessments pre-date the current framework and are out of date. In other words, the document the council adopted to help it refuse grey belt applications is being used as the evidence base for this one.

The two numbers that will decide it

The third finding is arithmetic, and it is the part the council cannot argue with.

The Housing Delivery Test records Spelthorne delivering 61 per cent of its housing requirement. That is below the 75 per cent threshold. It engages paragraph 11(d) of the NPPF, which tips the balance towards approval unless the harm significantly and demonstrably outweighs the benefits, and it is also the specific test the grey belt policy uses to establish “demonstrable unmet need”.

Against that, the council’s Statement of Housing Land Supply of March 2026 claims a 5.3-year supply: 4,007 deliverable dwellings against a five-year requirement of 3,786 including a 20 per cent buffer. The surplus is 221 dwellings, which the applicant calls “relatively limited resilience against delay”.

The council adopted its Local Plan in March 2026. Policy ST3 of that plan requires an immediate review, with a replacement submitted for examination by 17 March 2028. The applicant uses that against the plan’s weight too.

The developer offers 50 per cent affordable housing, roughly 254 homes, which its statement weighs as a “substantial” public benefit. Against the scheme it lists the loss of 87 trees and six tree groups, the net loss of 15 golf holes and permanent local landscape effects, each weighed as “moderate”.

There is a landfill under the fairways

The application is for “reprofiling of the land”, and the reason is in the odour assessment, one of 177 documents on the file.

The golf course sits on a historic landfill. The assessment says excavation would be confined to the restoration and capping soils so that the landfill below is “not expected to be intentionally disturbed”. It also warns that the thickness of those capping soils varies across the site, that localised excavation is proposed near a spot where hydrocarbon odours were identified during ground investigation, and that earthworks approaching the landfill interface should be monitored so it is not inadvertently exposed.

The predicted odour effect during enabling works is “slight adverse”, which the assessment classes as not significant. The Environmental Statement carries dozens of separate ground conditions annexes, more than any other topic in the pack.

The site is also immediately south and south-east of the Charlton Lane Eco Park, described in the applicant’s own assessment as a major waste management site with a gasifier, anaerobic digestion, community recycling and waste transfer and bulking facilities.

Who owns it, and who decides

The applicant is Cater Properties Ltd, working through DHA Planning Ltd of Union Street, London. Companies House holds one company registered under exactly that name, Cater Properties Limited, company number 00847494, incorporated on 3 May 1965.

The application form carries a Certificate B, which means the applicant is not the sole owner. Notice was served on 4 August 2026 on two other parties. Their names are redacted on the published form, but their addresses are not. One is at Woodhatch Place, 11 Cockshot Hill, Reigate RH2 8EF, which is the address Surrey County Council publishes as its own on every page of its website. The other is at Pine Ridge Golf Club, Old Bisley Road, Frimley, Camberley.

The council’s register gives the expected decision level as “Delegated if Refusal”. Read plainly, that means officers expect to be able to refuse this themselves, and that only a recommendation to approve would go before councillors. Two case officers are named, Matthew Churchill and Kiran Boparai.

Surrey Police has already responded, on 17 September. It raises no objection to the principle of the development, but recommends conditions requiring Secured by Design Homes 2025 standards across the housing and the public realm. It notes the design and access statement aims for a Gold award, and recommends early engagement with Surrey’s designing out crime team.

By 18 September the council had published 27 letters of representation.

What it means for you

• Comments close on Wednesday 7 October 2026. Anyone can comment, not only people who were sent a letter. Use the comments tab on application 26/00822/OUT on the council’s planning register.
• Write about planning matters. Green Belt and grey belt, highway safety and traffic, loss of trees, flood risk, ground conditions and the capacity of local schools and surgeries all count. Property values and who the developer is do not.
• The principle is what is being decided. Layout and appearance are reserved. Objecting to the look of the illustrative masterplan will carry less weight than objecting to 507 homes here at all.
• Ask to speak. If the application ever reaches the planning committee, the public speaking rules apply. On the register’s current expectation it would only go there if officers were minded to approve.
• The decision deadline is 1 January 2027, so the council has time. A decision before Christmas would be quick for a scheme this size.

If you want the background on how Spelthorne’s roads and services are already running, our Staines planning news page tracks the borough’s live applications, and Staines roadworks and travel covers the A244 and A308 that would carry this traffic.

Sources

• Spelthorne Borough Council planning register, application 26/00822/OUT, Land at Sunbury Golf Club, Charlton Lane, Shepperton TW17 8QA, read 20 September 2026, for the proposal, the dates, the Green Belt constraint, the case officers, the expected decision level and the document list.
• Planning statement submitted with the application by DHA Planning, for the Arup Stage 1 Green Belt Assessment scores for Local Area 47, the Grey Belt Planning Advice Note extracts, the Housing Delivery Test figure of 61 per cent, the March 2026 housing land supply position, the 50 per cent affordable housing offer and the summary of benefits and harms.
• Indicative accommodation schedule submitted with the application, for the 253 affordable and 254 market homes, the bedroom mix, the 21.46 hectare site area and the 10.17 hectare net developable area.
• Odour assessment submitted with the application, dated 28 July 2026, for the historic landfill, the capping soils, the hydrocarbon odours and the description of the Charlton Lane Eco Park.
• Application form, Planning Portal reference PP-15073938, for the applicant and the Certificate B ownership declaration.
• Surrey Police Crime Prevention Design Team response of 17 September 2026, published on the application file.
• Companies House for Cater Properties Limited, company number 00847494.
• Surrey County Council for its published address at Woodhatch Place, 11 Cockshot Hill, Reigate RH2 8EF.