Decision over site is the wrong one (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Decision over site is the wrong one

8:40am Friday 27th August 2010 in

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Sir.–I am appalled by the decision to allow the loss of one of the town's major employment sites [the former Eli Lilly and Victoria lot sites off Kingsclere Road in Houndmills] for a supposedly mixed-use development which in reality is dominated by flats.

It will open the flood gates to further applications from other landowners keen to double the value of their land by having it reclassified as residential.

It compromises the operation of other companies in the area, as evidenced by the objections from the Sainsbury's depot whose management asked borough councillors to reject the Lemon Land plan that has been approved.

In recent years our council has shown itself to have little grasp of the importance that manufacturing plays in the borough.

Earlier this year a similarly ill-conceived scheme at Laverstoke Mill wiped out the second largest employment site in my ward resulting in the loss of several companies, none of whom were able to find suitable sites in the borough.

The clear evidence of recent years is that we need to re-balance our economy away from the disastrous reliance on financial services and housing.

Nothing illustrates the futility of this more than the failed bid to move BCOT onto this [former Eli Lilly] site. A plan that involved moving an established college of predominantly modern buildings, to a smaller site with less parking, merely to release their existing site for even more high density housing.

A plan which the college has already spent £700,000 on, with nothing to show for it. Money that could have been invested in education.

As for the housing, to maroon nearly 500 houses in the middle of an employment area bounded by the railway is planning of the worst kind.

Sadly our planners now appear to be replicating the failures of the past with the same inevitable consequences for future generations.

–Cllr Ian Tilbury, Independent, Overton, Laverstoke & Steventon