Tipner West: Portsmouth council votes to push on but it is back to the drawing board for what exactly will be built

Portsmouth City Council has decided to push ahead with creating new plans after a vote on Tuesday.

Despite pleas from environmental campaigners not to progress 'destructive' proposals to reclaim land from protected sites in Portsmouth Harbour, the council agreed to a 'set of principles' approved by the Lib Dem cabinet last month which includes building at least 1,250 homes and 58,000sqm of employment space.

But almost half the councillors abstained, with furious remarks made by Conservatives about ‘the indecision and incompetence of the Lib Dem administration’ and anger at the fact that £20m was spent on the now-discarded Lennox Point ‘super-peninsula’.

Council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson said he was ‘heartened’ by the fact that only four councillors voted against the recommendations made by his Lib Dem cabinet last month.

'The report was very detailed and to have only four objections shows how far we have moved forward over the last year,' he said. 'We now have to bring back detailed plans that minimises land reclamation and produces a better place for people to live.'

Councillors had been told that all four options previously looked at, including the Lennox Point super-peninsula and a do-nothing approach, 'made no financial sense' and would leave the authority with a multimillion-pound black hole.

SEE ALSO: Guildhall to plant 100 trees every time it holds a conference

The council has already spent almost £20m on plans and assessments for the area.

‘What you do [in this situation] is you go around find a different alternative and that’s what this report does,' cabinet member for economic development Steve Pitt said. ‘It sets down very clear criteria and parameters within which that work can now be progressed and it must be done, at this point, cross-party.’

His Lib Dem group voted unanimously to support this work but were only supported by two Portsmouth Independents: Brian and George Madgwick with the latter saying any other decision would have 'frustrated' progress.

'We all have equal responsibility for this,' he said. 'We're now going into a rubbish situation because, for years, politicians like us have been making rubbish decisions. There's no good option.'

Conservative Scott Payter-Harris, who was one of 19 to abstain in the vote, said councillors were being asked to 'pick their poison' over the future of the project and that the council was now in a 'disastrous place'.

Councillor Cal Corkery, the leader of the Labour group which also abstained, said there had been ‘a failure of political leadership’.

‘It’s incumbent on the council leadership to bring people with you,’ he said. ‘You need to engage in a cross-party, cross-city way meaningfully so that we avoid situations like this where we ended up £20m of taxpayers' money sunk into a project that will no longer be taken forward.’

Four Tories voted against the report, including Matt Atkins who said the fall-out of abandoning progress was due to ‘the indecision and incompetence of the Lib Dem administration’.

The principles agreed by the cabinet to be put forward at Tuesday’s extraordinary full council meeting are:

- Ruling out the Lennox Point masterplan

- Ruling out doing nothing

- Prioritising the protection of the land south of the firing range

- Providing a minimum of 1,250 homes and 58,000sqm or employment space (the terms of the City Deal)

- ‘Satisfying the requirements of regulatory bodies’, including Natural England and the Environment Agency

- Maximising job creation

- Minimising costs to the council

And minimising land reclamation while providing at least a 10 per cent ‘net gain in biodiversity

However, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust chief executive Debbie Tann said any land reclamation went beyond its ‘red lines’ and would set ‘a dangerous national precedent’.

‘There is no more compromise to be found on our side,' she said, warning that the trust, which has spearheaded opposition alongside the RSPB, would make its decision 'a national issue’.

Speaking after the meeting she said she was 'disappointed' by the decision.

‘We will now open up another conversation [with the council] but the fact remains that building on the protected site is illegal,’ she added.

Green Party member Tracey McCulloch accused the council of 'scaremongering tactics' by 'implying that there is a significant cost' if work is not progressed.

The Tipner West plans, which were later named Lennox Point after the founder of Goodwood racecourse, were announced in 2019 and would have seen a £1billion car-free peninsula created.

They were an intention to establish a striking gateway to Portsmouth, and also to meet the government’s housing targets and create more jobs, which Portsmouth has struggled to meet due to a lack of available land.

The scheme would have seen 67 acres of land reclaimed from Portsmouth Harbour – and it was this that stoked the fury of environmental lobby groups such as the Wildlife Trust and the RSPB, which campaigned strongly against the idea.

Lennox Point would have had four districts, and would have seen a variety of housing from family homes to high-rise residential development next to what was described as ‘the largest green maritime employment park in the country’.

It would have been an electric-only net carbon zero neighbourhood with no gas supply. This, along with what was described as a ‘net biodiversity gain’, was hoped to see it win approval from the environmental lobby