Manydown exclusion will cost Chineham (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Manydown exclusion will cost Chineham

11:05am Friday 13th January 2012 in Letters

Sir.–I fear I must take issue with a detail in your report (Gazette, December 22) concerning the borough council’s recent debate on Manydown.

While it is true that the Basing Ward will suffer from the current Local Development Framework (LDF) proposals, the areas which will initially suffer most are almost certainly Chineham, Taylor’s Farm and Bramley.

Although the Conservative administration has argued long and hard that it is against a Major Development Area (MDA), they are now seemingly content to see what has been described as “akin to a Major Development Area” surrounding, and using, the resources of the Chineham Ward.

By bizarrely excluding Manydown from consideration in the first phase of the LDF, the pressure is such that something just short of 2,000 houses are likely to be constructed in the vicinity of Chineham and around Basing Ward.

Two brave Conservative Basing Ward councillors have resisted this as have I.

Cllr Cubitt has supported all three resolutions I have proposed, seeking to reinstate Manydown as an area for consideration given that this was what we paid £10million of taxpayers’ money to secure.

I wonder whether the new year might bring some realisation from fellow Chineham councillors and those representing Bramley and Sherfield as to the folly of excluding Manydown and the resultant infrastructural pressure which will inevitably be placed on Chineham if the present plans are endorsed?

–Martin Biermann, Independent Councillor, Chineham Ward, Reading Road, Chineham.