Rory McIlroy has secured his second victory in a week after the newly crowned Masters champion won a heated planning battle at his sprawling €10.5million estate in England.
The Co Down golf star, 35, has been given ‘very special’ permission to install a heat pump for his huge outdoor swimming pool in the grounds of his home on the Wentworth estate in Surrey.
The plans had been deemed as ‘inappropriate’ by Runnymede Borough Council but the local authority has given them the go-ahead as McIlroy had demonstrated the environmental benefits of the pump by using renewable energy. Officials approved the plans with conditions and said ‘very special circumstances are considered to exist’.
It comes just days after McIlroy’s sensational victory at Augusta National in a tense play-off on the 18th green against Justin Rose to secure his place in history by completing a career major grand slam.
McIlroy’s representatives included an application within the plans to argue that ‘very special circumstances’ existed due to the ‘wider environmental benefits’ of having a heat pump providing ‘renewable energy’ for the heating of the proposed pool. The mansion is described in planning documents as a ‘large, detached dwelling sited centrally within a substantive plot’.
The golfer was previously granted planning permission for a dining and utility room extension, a new roof and internal alterations. He was also given the green light last year for the outdoor pool, a play centre and a 5ft-high water feature wall. Council planners said the site ‘as a whole is currently under construction after the approval of recent permissions’.
But the new application sought planning permission to install an air source heat pump to serve the outdoor pool along with building a timber enclosure.
McIlroy’s planning agent wrote: ‘The provision of renewable energy limits the requirement for the use of non-renewable energy sources. The wider environmental benefits associated with increased production of energy from renewable sources using the (heat pump) constitutes a “very special circumstance” which justifies the (heat pump) in the Green Belt.’
Planners agreed and in the decision notice stated: ‘It is considered that significant weight can be attributed to the environmental benefits and this would outweigh the harm to the Green Belt.
‘It is considered that very special circumstances exist.’ McIlroy also owns a stunning mansion in Florida located inside the prestigious private Bear’s Club where he unwinds with his wife Erica Stoll and their daughter Poppy.
