IT has been more than 20 years since the borough and county council earmarked Manydown for homes to be built, but frustration remains high as not a single house has since been built.
Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council (BDBC) and Hampshire County Council (HCC) are the joint owners of a long lease on 2,000 acres at Manydown, with plans to develop the land in western Basingstoke.
The northern part of the land has already been allocated and a new community with more than 3,500 homes and a 250-acre countryside park will be created.
The councils are considering how the land to the south should be developed, but it could see an even larger community with 10,000 homes proposed.
READ MORE: Manydown: Environmental campaigner pleads with Basingstoke and Deane Bough Council
The development has a long and complicated history with the site being bought by the councils in 1996.
By August 1, 2003, the county council's cabinet voted unanimously in favour of earmarking Manydown's west site as a major development area.
On September 18 of the same year, the borough council agreed to include north Manydown as a proposed housing allocation site in the draft local plan to end in 2016.
Following this, a planning inspector who held an examination in public on the borough council's draft local plan recommended the plan period should end in 2011 and the proposed housing allocation should be removed.
The borough council’s cabinet decided in January 2012 to exclude the north Manydown site from the consultation draft of the next plan as the landowners had not put it forward for development.
This decision was challenged by the Manydown Company in the High Court. The legal challenge was successful, with the judge stressing that the site had been bought for the development of houses.
The northern part of the Manydown land covered by the lease was then allocated in the following 2011 to 2029 plan, which was adopted in 2016.
To move the development forward, BDBC and HCC entered into a partnership with master developer Urban & Civic and global charitable foundation the Wellcome Trust in July 2020.
In 2021 archaeological digs to look for finds of national importance ahead of building the new homes started.
Now, 20 years on from the land being earmarked for houses, residents and councillors continue to be frustrated that not a single home has been built and it remains a dominant topic of conversation at council meetings.
The Gazette contacted BDBC, HCC and Urban & Civic for an update on the plans and asked why nothing has been built in two decades.
In a joint response issued by BDBC, they said: "Preliminary survey work started on the Manydown site in March 2021 as part of a series of early investigations to better understand the site, including the precise location of utility supplies, archaeological trenching, drainage tests and further detailed ground investigations.
"Following outline planning permission being granted, the partnership has been progressing with the detailed work needed to submit further planning applications to set out more detail on the development as a whole and the initial phase in terms of design and site access arrangements.
"In April 2023, planning permission was approved by the borough council’s development control committee for the temporary construction access junctions as a first step in supporting the permissions and access needed to start work on site.
"Alongside this, negotiations to finalise the freehold purchase of the land, under the original lease from 1996, are ongoing so that work can start."
However, this is not the answer many in the town were hoping for, including county councillor for Basingstoke Stephen Reid who said he has "warned people for years" that Manydown would be difficult.
He said: "It is severed by a railway line and surrounded by very busy or saturated roads that will need expensive improvements. People kept saying 'it will be easy' but we can see that they were wrong.
SEE MORE: Basingstoke council comes under fire after revealing extra funding is needed for Manydown
"The saddest thing is that, by putting too many of its planning eggs into the Manydown basket, and then finding it couldn't deliver, the borough council lost control of the development process and put too much power into the hands of the house builders. That is why the new local plan must slow down the development of Basingstoke."
Basingstoke's MP Maria Miller said that many contradictory statements have been made by the individuals running the council.
She added: "The new three-party coalition running our borough council must be straight with residents on their house building plans. Manydown is a big part of that.
"I want Basingstoke house building to slow down, and the Conservative group, the largest group in the council, agree.
"We worked with Government to gain recognition of Basingstoke's position when the next local plan is developed. This new administration must do what most residents want and slow down house building to reflect our needs not the needs of neighbouring local authorities that have ducked out of building new homes themselves.
"Basingstoke has, for more than 50 years, built homes for over 180 000 people. We need clarity that this new administration backs my call to slow down house building to focus on the needs of Basingstoke residents whilst the NHS catches up and expands their services including building our new hospital."
In response to this, the current borough council leader Cllr Paul Harvey said that Basingstoke's Conservatives broke the promise of delivering Manydown.
He added: "For the last 20 years, the Basingstoke Conservatives have played politics with Manydown and as a result, our villages and towns have suffered from excessive development.
"It took a high court ruling to tell the Conservatives they were acting unlawfully. The option to develop Manydown was purchased using the money gained from selling off council houses on the promise that they would build more. They broke their promises. They never delivered affordable homes as promised.
"Instead of a properly planned borough, we have seen speculative conveyer-belt housing development without the necessary infrastructure.
"It could have been so different. Manydown could have saved us from that and we could have had the affordable homes we know we desperately need. Twenty years later our new administration is doing everything we can to bring Manydown forward and focus on affordable homes."
He continued: "We have cross-party rejected the Government’s top-down imposed targets. We want Michael Gove to do away with the Government’s Standard Method for calculating housing numbers. Will your Government listen and act on this, will you, like we have, vote to end top-down housing targets and the Government imposed ‘Standard Method."
In response, former council leader and Basingstoke Conservatives group leader, Cllr Simon Minas-Bound said: "The Manydown project, with its convoluted history, is a massive undertaking. I won't engage in Cllr Harvey's manoeuvring regarding events over a decade old. His smoke-and-mirrors mud-slinging has left people bewildered about recent progress. It's time for Cllr Harvey to step up, complete the final issues all in process and handed to him in May this year.
"For real progress to occur, we need a fresh Local Plan. Despite cancelled public meetings, the baffling delay by Cllr Harvey's coalition is pushing the Local Plan update to 2024. We, as a council, had a clear timeline for draft plan consultation in the coming weeks. Cllr Harvey must admit that his delay puts our countryside at risk with haphazard development and inadequate infrastructure.
"Stop the politics it is time to be transparent and act responsibly Cllr Harvey."
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