I have written to you before about the proposal to sell some unused land at the bottom of our back field for the construction of a dementia care home. The money we receive would be invested in the club’s fields and facilities, safeguarding our future at Ash Grove for generations to come. 

A single application for planning permission to build the care home and to carry out the works to our grounds and pavilion is now live on the council website 

The club needs all members to support our case.  

The council could close the consultation exercise and take a decision in a few weeks. Please comment by the end of September if you can. If for any reason you cannot, please comment anyway: it’s likely that the consultation will extend to the end of November. 

Individual comments will carry much more weight with the council than a petition or a pro-forma submission. We need you to take the time to express your personal view through the website. However, just as a reminder, these are the enormous benefits that the project will bring to the club and to the local community: 

Our playing surfaces will be transformed. An artificial grass pitch (AGP) will allow us to play and train in almost all weathers. We will grade and take the slope off the railway pitch. We will improve our drainage, irrigation and floodlighting to modern standards. We will re-lay and improve the area in front of the clubhouse (currently astro-turfed). 

The general environment of the club’s grounds will be greatly improved. Proper footpaths will allow spectators to watch games from firm ground (and keep mud out of the clubhouse). Footpaths will also control pedestrian traffic to the woods and keep dogs off the pitches. The landscaping scheme, which includes a small pond in the grounds of the care home, increases the biodiversity of the site by 35%. We will improve the surfaces and capacity of our car parks, within their current boundaries. 

We will transform our tired and outdated clubhouse by extending and re-configuring it. Modern changing rooms, catering for women’s rugby as well, are very different to what we have. We will build a bigger and better gym. We will improve our kitchen, our storage and our toilets. 

We want to provide a facility for Padel tennis, the fastest growing sport in Europe. There is nowhere to play this game in Amersham today and many people travel to other towns to do so. The courts will be at least twice the recommended distance from any neighbours, to avoid disturbing them. Padel should provide the club with an income, which we will use to maintain our new facilities. 

The dementia care home itself helps to address a significant problem in Amersham, where there is a real dearth of provision. Some members will have personal experience of the difficulty of finding adequate care for their own family locally.  

There is more detail (and some pictures!) on the planning portal. More information will also be available to members in the clubhouse in the coming weeks.  

As ever, thank you for your invaluable support. 

Huw 

Huw Thomas 
Chairman 
Amersham & Chiltern RFC