CARLISLE’S crisis-stricken Stony Holme Golf Course has been so neglected since its closure that it will take months to restore it, say two former officials from the club.

Former head green-keeper Robin Little and the club’s captain Mark Thompson have accused Carlisle City Council of doing nowhere near enough to maintain the course since it was suddenly closed on October 3.

The council-owned facility was plunged into crisis when operator Mack Golf ceased trading and went into voluntary administration.

In the weeks after the bombshell, Carlisle City Council said that efforts would be made to maintain the course. But both Mr Thompson and Mr Little say there has been no effective maintenance. The grass is overgrown, much debris from the recent flood has not been cleared, and - more worrying - parts of the course are now affected by blight.

Robin Little was head greenkeeper at the club until its closure.

“It is going to rack and ruin,” he told The Cumberland News. “Since the doors closed on October 3, absolutely nothing has been done. Very little, if any work, has been carried out. There’s been no debris cleaned up from the food in October.”

Mr Little said grass which has not been cut and kept relatively short regularly will have become weak.

Mr Little said: “The grass needs to be disease free, but fusarium [patch] disease is now quite active on the course. When it starts, you get a patch that is about the size of a 20p piece. When it gets to a couple of inches big, your course is not in a good position; and when it gets to four inches big you’re in dire straits. The patches up at Stony Holme are the size of footballs.

“It is recoverable, but it would involve a few weeks of work, and then months of waiting.” Now a greenkeeper elsewhere, Mr Little said the longer the course is neglected the harder it will be to restore it.

Asked why the course mattered so much, Mr Little added: “It was a municipal golf course which definitely provided something other courses didn’t; it was affordable golf for everyone.”

Mr Thompson said senior councillors - including Carlisle City Council Leader Colin Glover - had given an assurance the course would be maintained but the vital work to achieve this is not being done.

“We were told it would be maintained to a standard to enable it to be opened as soon as somebody else took over. That clearly hasn’t been done.

“It’s about far more than just the golf. The club has been a community. Some of our best golfers started there. Our message to the council is this: Please, please do what you said you were going to do and properly maintain this golf course.”

A council spokeswoman said the course and club had closed because Mack Golf ceased trading.”We appreciate the concerns following the closure of the Swifts Driving Range and Stony Holme Golf Course. The closures were as a result of Mack Golf, the management company running the sites, ceasing trading.

“We are in discussion with the administrator and looking at what we are able to do to assist customers affected by the closure. We are also considering the long-term future of the two sites.

“Given the nature of events and the administration process, we are not in a position to reopen the course in the short-term. In the meantime we have implemented a winter maintenance programme that will avoid deterioration of the Stony Holme course.”