“Very cross… very sad,” is how David sums up his feelings. For him, the club (where monthly fees for a full seven day membership were around £130), was “very much a community-based” place, and its closure has left many locals having “lost a friendship group”. A former county planner in Oxfordshire, he argues: “Planning and health are inextricably linked. People need to exercise, they need to have somewhere to walk, go, play, commune. Mental health and physical health are exceedingly undervalued at the moment by planning.”
