BASINGSTOKE council has said that plans to build four new warehouses near the M3 should be refused.

Basingstoke Gateway is a plan for four massive warehouses at Oakdown Farm, near Junction 7 of the M3. As previously reported, The Gazette understands that Amazon could be one of the future occupants.

But now, the council's planning team has recommended that councillors refuse the planning application for the four warehouses at an extradordinary meeting of the authority's development control committee next month.

Reasons cited for the refusal from planning officer Sue Tarvit include that the development would be "detrimental to the character and visual amenity of the landscape", and fails to mitigate those impacts.

Other reasons include that it fails to conserve biodiversity and the plan fails to look after skylarks.

But the council have recommended that plans for the largest of the warehouses should be approved.

Additionally, the report says that the council has been contacted by the office of the Housing Secretary, who has been asked to consider the application by six of Hampshire's MPs.

The report reveals that the Planning Case Work Unit is now considering whether to call-in the application.

Maria Miller, Ranil Jayawardena, Kit Malthouse, Steve Brine, Flick Drummond and Damian Hinds have written to Robert Jenrick, asking him to consider the application as it would "seriously compromise" plans to build a news hospital on an adjacent site.

Mrs Miller said: "Junction 7 of the M3 has been identified as a preferred location for the new Hospital and we cannot allow that to be jeopardised by speculative applications coming forward which could eat up existing road and motorway capacity before the Hampshire Hospitals Trust has been able to complete their planning application.

"We need to put the health of the community first. The NHS Hospital design and planning process is a complex and lengthy process.

"Our Hospital Trust need time to get that right. In the meantime we need the Government to ensure the preferred site is protected from planning applications coming forward.”

A spokesperson for Newlands, the company behind the application, has told The Gazette that the MPs' assertion is incorrect.

The plans, first reported by The Gazette last summer, will be decided by the 12 councillors on the development control committee on April 7.

The councillors that sit on the committee are: Paul Miller (Chair, CON), Nick Robinson (Vice Chair, CON), Dave George (CON), David Leeks (CON), Sven Godesen (CON), Jane Frankum (LAB), Stephanie Grant (LAB), Paul Harvey (IND), Andy McCormick (LAB), Michael Bound (LDM), David Potter (IND), Chris Tomblin (IND).