Stubbington Study Centre closure: nearly 20,000 sign petition to save beloved outdoor activity facility

On a march on February 8, organisers said more than 1,000 people, with many children, marched against the Hampshire County Council’s proposal to close the Stubbinton Study Centre and replace it with a children’s home.

The campaign march, moved by the ‘Save Stubbington Study Centre’ group, started a paper petition to collect signatures and hand it out to the county council as a sign of the community objections.

At the Lee on the Solent march, the group collected 500 signatures. Their goal is to reach 20,000 in a bid to save the centre, which offers residential opportunities for children with teambuilding, physical and environmental awareness activities.

Lin Gell, campaigner organiser, said that they already have over 18,000 signatures online and 1,000 on paper, and with the support, they want Hampshire County Council to change its mind about the proposal.

She said: “The support is amazing. We have so much support from MPs, councillors and the whole of Hampshire.”

“We want Hampshire [council] to change their mind. We want them to tell us what the other sites they considered.”

The group will collect signatures at three venues this Saturday (February 22), Fareham town centre, Lee High Street, and Brockhurst Gate, to continue its fight.

With all the signatures, alongside the area’s Fareham borough councillor Pal Hayre, will then deliver the petition to the county council in Winchester.

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Last week, Hill Head Residents’ Association (HHRA) applied to Fareham Borough Council for it to become an asset of community value.

The move won’t stop the council’s plan, but it could delay the decision and make it consider other options.

Recently, Cllr Adrian Collett requested the council to “tighten up” the timetable for the decision-making in order to allow more time for other options to be considered since having a decision-making process “stretched out” against the government’s deadline leaves “no room to examine other options”.

In an email to the leader of the council, Cllr Collett said: “By leaving things as they are, you are shutting off any option of coming up with a better way forward, so I would repeat my request that you ask officers to tighten up the timetable so that the decision is not “painted into the corner” on something for which the government offered funding to the County Council for almost a year ago.”

An exempt document dated January 13 indicated that the council has considered a “range of alternatives”.

According to Cllr Collet, county council officers said the site selection process will be fully explained in the report to the 2050 select committee meeting on March 6.

Hampshire County Council said the new home was needed to cope with a high demand for specialist residential care with the county’s schools using more than 100 other providers that offer outdoor education opportunities.