A PAY and display car park in Whitchurch is set to close and be redeveloped to create five new homes next month.

The temporary car park at Whitchurch Railway Station will close on the evening of Wednesday, June 7.

The site is set to be redeveloped into five new homes – three three-bedroom houses and two four-bedroom properties.

Approval for the planning application for the new dwellings was granted by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council in July 2015.

Site owner Hugo Haig said the land has been operating as a car park for six years.

He confirmed that over the past six months revenue has fallen as a result of free parking at the vacant offices across the road.

Mr Haig also confirmed the site had been offered to Network Rail and to South West Trains but neither wished to buy the land.

Mr Haig, managing director of development company Lochailort Investments Ltd., said: “It’s a shame it’s got to close because there’s nowhere else to park, and I’m sure it will be sorely missed.”

The temporary car park was built on the site of former pub, The Railway Inn, which the council gave approval to be demolished back in 2010.

The 49-space car park was then built on a temporary basis, for which consent had to be renewed every three years.

Councillor Keith Watts, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council representative for Whitchurch, said he was “disappointed”

the temporary car park was granted in the first place.

Cllr Watts said: “I opposed the temporary planning permission because it was temporary and that it would eventually closed and people commuting in would be used to the car park there.

“And that’s where we are now.

“And I think we were a high risk of people being used to it there and of clogging our roads with their parking.”

Cllr Watts added his disappointment was in attracting commuters with the car park and that they now had nowhere to go.