There is ‘zero evidence’ that a council needs to sell off a golf course for housing to stop itself going bankrupt, an angry campaigner has said.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead (RBWM) is committed to selling Maidenhead Golf course to private developer Cala Homes. It hopes to reap some £105 million from the deal, which it and the regulator CIPFA say it needs to cover its debts and avoid effective bankruptcy.

But CIPFA also says the amount the council could make from the sale is uncertain – leading Maidenhead resident Andrew Hill to tell council leaders there’s ‘zero evidence’ to justify it.

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Mr Hill said: “CIPFA claim that the golf course development will bring in 105 million but in the very next breath in their report they admit they haven’t got the foggiest idea if that’s true.

“CIPFA have zero evidence to support their claim that this is even necessary to fix the finances.”

Mr Hill was speaking at a meeting of RBWM’s cabinet – its committee of leading councillors – on Wednesday, October 30. The cabinet was discussing a report by CIPFA into the state of the council’s finances.

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The report says the sale is ‘critical to reducing the council’s debt burden’ and that it is ‘important for the golf course development to go ahead’.

But it also says RBWM can’t be ‘confident’ in the amount it expects to earn from the sale.

The CIPFA report notes that the current value of the deal is based on the hope that 1,396 homes will be sold between July 2026 and July 2037. But it says financial estimates and the timing of the development is ‘very likely to change’.

And it says plans haven’t taken into account potential changes, while the number of homes to be built has already fallen from the original 1,500 homes ‘which causes concern about the extent of the receipts available’.

More than 2,000 people signed a petition against the sale of Maidenhead golf course earlier this year. They argued the development would mean the loss of Maidenhead’s ‘green lung’.

READ MORE: Maidenhead Golf Course development 'needed to pay RBWM debt'

The deal was agreed when RBWM was under the control of Conservatives. Liberal Democrats who now lead the council opposed the deal and say they tried to find a way out of it. But they say the council is legally locked into the deal.

And RBWM says the £105 million it expects to receive from the selloff is needed to pay off more than £200 million in debt that the deal was ‘intended to repay’.

But Mr Hill said the council’s Liberal Democrat and independent leaders should be ‘politically bold’ and scrap the deal.

He said: “CIPFA say that being politically bold means building on the golf club but there’s nothing bold about harming other people’s environment and other people’s health.

“How is it politically bold to say that voting for change in local democratic elections is an irrelevance?”