A DROITWICH golf club is teeing off into a successful future by helping to save homes from a flooding nightmare.

Gaudet-Luce Golf Club, in association with Severn Trent and funding from Barratts, has helped in the completion of a surface water sewer system to run through the course.

The initiated measures should help ease flooding concerns for around 240 new homes in the Tagwell Road area.

The proposal for the pipe and holding lake was put to the Environment Agency by the golf club more than two-and-a-half years ago, explained the course's operations manager Mark Laing.

"The stream flowing through the course couldn't cope with the increase of surface water from the new housing estate and residue from the M5 motorway," he said.

"The reservoir where the water collects was fast becoming full of silt and threatening both the brook and the houses further down stream."

The surface water now collects into the purpose-built lake and is controlled by a sluice gate at the golf course before draining into Gilton Brook nearby.

"The new sewer will act as an extension to the existing sewer which has become overwhelmed and caused flooding in the past," said Jim Allen, Severn Trent Water's sewerage operations manager.

In addition to providing homes with water relief, managing director of the golf club Martin Fernihough feels the scheme has helped to create a splashing new look for the course.

"This new lake provides not only a new challenge for golfers, but with the planting of reeds, wild flowers and fauna we have already attracted this is a great boost for the environment," he said.

A local resident, who asked not to be named, blamed surface water and silt in the past for a flooded garage and the poor condition of his garden's soil.

He welcomed the new measures and hoped the new holding lake would solve the problem.