Road safety tops list at meeting for new homes

Residents meet to discuss plans for housing in Bedhampton

Developers from Bargate Homes were among those that presented at a meeting about the 50-home proposal south of Lower Road in Bedhampton with councillors and members of the public able to ask questions.

Ian Baker has lived on the road for the past three years and spoke at the meeting about safety.

He said: ‘I have had five near-misses on that road as it is not safe for people to walk along as it is.

‘I work in health and safety and we would record near-misses.

‘The traffic will increase exponentially so will the number of near misses and inevitably accidents.’

Ron Tate from Save Old Bedhampton spoke at the meeting.

He said: ‘I think the meeting was very civilised and it has given the developers and also the council a lot to digest about what the residents think of the proposal and the issues we have with it.’

A petition with 1,500 signatures was handed into the council to get the potential site removed from the Draft Local Plan 2036.

Ron said: ‘We want to debate this issue at full council and we hope we can stop the steam roller.’

School places and concerns of the management company fees were also issues raised.

Chris Morrell from the West Bedhampton Resident Association also attended the meeting. He said: ‘We were here to support Old Bedhampton and a lot of the problems we have are the same like the traffic and the schools so it is important to be here.’

Development director for Bargate Katherine Child said: ‘This forum is all part of the process we go through to get feedback from the locals.

‘The next stage will be to collate the comments and go from there.’

Previously several Havant Borough Councillors have expressed that they are behind residents who are opposing the plans.

Councillor Ken Smith said: ‘Myself included, all three councillors for Bedhampton are 100 per cent behind the residents, but we have to go through the exercise we’re going through, to assess the site.

‘We’re presenting a case so the inspectors can see we’ve worked on this and come to a proper conclusion – and that is that the development shouldn’t go ahead. The access planned for the site is ridiculous.’