AMBITIOUS plans for a new golf course in Walmersley are to be dumped after provoking anger over unauthorised tipping.

Planning chiefs refused permission for a nine-hole golf course to be created at the former Gin Hall Reservoir, and have resolved to bring 16 years of tipping operations at the site to an end.

Proposals for the site, which lies between Walmersley Road and the M66 motorway, included woodland, a practice range, car park and club building.

Landowner Mr Les Smith was originally permitted to fill the reservoir with waste material so that farmland could be created.

Residents, who complained of smells and methane gas, campaigned against the tipping in the early 1990s, and councillors ordered that the operations should cease.

But a report presented to the planning control committee last Thursday (April 25) claimed that unpermitted tipping had taken place at the site for at least the last four years.

Householders who objected to the golf club proposal said that it could be used to validate further dumping.

Mr Oscar Goldstein, secretary of Walmersley Golf Club and a Walmersley resident, told the committee: "As far as we can see there is no evidence of any need for a further golf club in the area.

"The applicant is a tipper who has proved unreliable and I believe this is seen as an exercise for further tipping, with no guarantee that the development would ever be completed."

Councillor Bob Bibby, a member of the planning committee, said: "For some 12 years we have been unable to stop the flow of tipping."

In 1994, Mr Smith was fined £3,000 by Bury magistrates for allowing illegal tipping on land at Gin Hall.

The plan was refused at Thursday's meeting due to insufficient information on landscaping and the possible need to import more waste.

Legal advice is now being sought on options to prevent further tipping. An ultimatum on the completion of improvement work using materials already available at the site could be issued.

A planning department spokesman told the Bury Times: "The decision has given us the authority to go ahead with enforcement proceedings, but we will be led by the advice of the council's legal officer on their precise nature."

Radcliffe-based chartered surveyor Tom Myerscough, who is acting on behalf of Mr Smith, said: "We submitted what we thought would be a good development for green belt purposes, which I think was ideal for the site.

"They wanted information about the land levels which were impossible for us to give."

Mr Myerscough said that he considered the issue of tipping to be irrelevant to the planning decision.