Club member loses case for fees refund during Covid closure

A golf club member who took his club to court because it didn’t refund part of his subscription when he couldn’t play golf due to the various Covid lockdowns has lost his case.

The landmark case will come as a welcome news to clubs who may have feared that it would have opened the oodgates to similar claims should the claim have been successful.

The golfer was a member of a club –neither of which have been named – that was forced to close three times: from late March to mid-May 2020, most of November 2020, and the rst three months of 2021, due to the pandemic. The club received a claim in breach of contract from the member for a refund of his subscriptions for the three periods.

According to the National Golf Clubs’ Advisory Association, which advised the club throughout the lockdowns and represented it in court, the nancial value of the claim was fairly low but, had it been successful, it could have devastated the club if other members had then requested the same refund.

At the hearing, the claimant argued for a pro-rated refund of subscriptions under the membership contract, essentially saying that he had not been able to play golf on every day that he chose to do so and that the club, by following the national lockdown restrictions imposed by the government, had breached that membership contract.

In its defence the club said its constitution did not give any guarantee of golf for 365 days of the year and that while the course was closed for play, the member still received some bene t from his membership as, for example, the clubhouse and course were maintained during that period.

The court agreed that the club constitution also vested power in the club’s committee to manage the club and course, including being able to restrict entry to the course and premises in any circumstances, provided that it did so lawfully and fairly. The judge also agreed with the club on its contention that any member joining prior to the lockdowns would have a reasonable expectation that they may miss some days of golf each year as a result of bad weather, dangerous conditions and tournaments.

Alistair Smith, CEO of the NGCAA, whose barrister defended the club in court, said: “Any golf member re-joining at the start of 2021 would be likely to have a reasonable expectation of further lockdowns, in addition to those which they might have had already given the state of the pandemic at that point and the history of lockdowns and restrictions up until that point. We now have a rst and valuable judicial interpretation of the proper response by clubs to the challenges presented by Covid.”

Rather than o ering direct refunds, some clubs in the UK o ered extensions to membership fees during Covid, o ering 15 months’ membership for the price of 12, while others o ered a batch of green fee vouchers to use for guest rounds. Around 80% of club managers surveyed during the pandemic said that they had received requests for refunds on membership fees, but none had said that a refund had been issued, indeed some had added an extra levy to the membership fees in order to help keep the clubs a oat.

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