Planning News
South East Plan
Public Consultation is underway on the Government's proposed changes to the draft SE Plan. An Examination-in-Public (EiP) was conducted in 2006/7. The alterations to the Plan will have a major impact on Hampshire. The original figure of 122,000 dwellings for Hampshire has risen to 133,700 new homes in the county over the 2000-2026 Plan period. This massive increase is not sustainable and cannot be accommodated without harm to our beautiful county. It cannot be right to produce and knowingly implement a twenty year Plan that will harm the environment and damage internationally important wildlife sites that should be legally protected. The figure of 80,000 new homes for the PUSH area has been agreed but the proposed overall increase for Hampshire will impact on the PUSH area. Sustainability Appraisal and Air Pollution studies show that Plan policies will be harmful to the environment. Furthermore, a significant change to house-building figures is that they should be minimal. In other words, 6,685 new homes per annum must be regarded as an inflexible minimum target.
Another alarming deletion by the Government is the clause in the draft Plan that development should be conditional on the provision of infrastructure, which means that the absence of infrastructure provision should not hold back development!
The government also proposes the deletion of the draft Plan's region-wide Strategic Gaps. As there are no Green Belts in Hampshire, the Gap Policy has served us well by preventing coalescence of towns and villages. The new proposals will undermine this long standing protection.
The Government has also proposed to dumb down the requirement for residential and commercial development to meet particular Ecohomes/BREEAM standards.
In fact, the proposed SE Plan has been devised solely for the benefit of economic growth.
Proposed Plan policies do not recognise in any way, the impact that the huge increase in house and industrial building and inevitable traffic congestion, will have on air pollution and carbon emissions to say nothing of the devastating affect on water levels in our chalk rivers from increased abstraction, and on our already declining natural habitats and struggling wildlife.
Horse Riding on Portsdown Hill
It appears that the British Horse Association has appealed against Portsmouth City Council's and Fareham Borough Council's refusal to grant planning permission for a gallop on Portsdown Hill. Natural
I have studied the proposal to erect a terrace of 2x2 bed and 2x3 bed houses at
Julia Orr - Honorary Secretary