Havant residents say no to ‘sprawling suburbia’ – and instead prioritise green topics

Havant Borough Council has published the results of its public consultation – in which it asked residents for their views on how development should be shaped in the borough.The ‘Building a Better Future Plan’ was first prepared in March last year after the previous plan was rejected by government planning inspectors.

This was due to it being open to legal challenges and not complying with the council’s statement of community involvement.The consultation asked residents to choose ‘key themes’ the plan should place greater emphasis on. The top theme was ‘reducing the impact of development on the natural environment’ with 15 per cent of respondents having chosen it as their main priority.This was followed by ‘protecting, conserving, and enhancing the borough’s local nature designations’ and ‘retaining and enhancing open spaces’.Speaking to the planning policy committee, Councillor Grainne Rason, who was elected the borough’s first Green Party councillor at last month’s elections, called into question the number of greenfield sites being put forward for house building.She said: ‘The residents from across the borough will have strong objections to many of the sites as you’re in no doubt aware.‘The consultation has shown that the residents put reducing the impact of development on the natural environment as their top priority.‘This clearly shows the residents want to stop the environment from becoming a completely built environment.‘They do recognise there is a need for housing but they do not want or need sprawling suburbia which is what this looks like.’Cllr Rason said that the target, set by the government, to build 516 houses in the borough per year is ‘unobtainable’.She added: ‘I was told last week that the council can build up to 200 houses per annum and we should be looking at how we can increase our ability to deliver what our residents need which is affordable, low carbon, higher density, quality homes.‘This will be achieved when the council has control of developments so I would say please remove some of these sites and set realistic housing targets.’