Town Council Update

August has been a quiet month for the town council, with only two committees meeting.  The interesting bit of Highways and Planning was the discussion of The Lib Dem plans to build on Hedge End's last area of unspoilt countryside which I have already tried to cover on this blog without contravening Cllr House's secrecy order. 

The other committee that has continued to meet is Recreation and Amenities (R&A) under the chairmanship of Cllr Jane Welsh.

We had a normal evening meeting on 10th and then, following concerns raised by people living near the Woodhouse Lane playing field, a number of us had a Saturday morning on site meeting with some residents and a fencing consultant to discuss ways of reducing the impact of noise likely to be generated by the new skateboard park currently under construction.

This project has been discussed at various meetings since last autumn and details are on the Town Council web site.

The Older People's Forum has requested that instructions be provided for the Sports Point exercise equipment in the Recreation Ground, and the council is negotiating with the supplier.

Tennis fans will be interested to know that an LTA competition organiser is looking at staging a competition at the Woodhouse Lane courts.

The committee is working with Hedge End Junior Cricket Club to improve the practice nets at Turnpike Way and is also looking at a suitable gate for the entrance to the field from Thistle Road.

We also considered a number of letters of complaint arising from the barriers and dugouts that have been installed by Hedge End Rangers FC at the Norman Rodaway field to bring the facilities up to Hampshire League standard. 

The official minutes of the meeting are on the Town Council web site.

Keeping Hedge End Tidy

A pile of garden waste was dumped on a grass verge in Parkwood Close at the beginning of summer.  Eastleigh Borough Council - who have been mowing the verge for as long as anyone can remember - started steering their mowers around the obstacle so that grass started growing up through the debris.

Local residents reported the fly-tipping to Eastleigh  but were amazed to learn that according to the official maps this verge did not belong to the Council, nor was it designated highway land.  The Council don't clear fly-tipping from private land even if they are happy to cut the grass there.

Asked by the neighbourhood watch co-ordinator if the Town Council could help, I spoke first to the Streetscene department at Eastleigh and had a long discussion about cuts, funding, redundancies, boundaries, and precedents.  Eventually it transpired that Streetscene management would agree to clear this fly-tipping if they could cross charge the work to the HEWEB(*) Local Area Committee.  The Local Area Coordinator agreed that maintaining the tidiness of the local environment is more important than squabbling over who owns the land and within a few days the rubbish was cleared.

So it's well done to the responsive HEWEB LAC, but a shame that we probably spent more time arguing over whether the work should be done than it took to drive a vehicle onto the verge and shovel the rubbish away.

(*) Hedge End, West End and Botley

Housing - Plan B



A view of new housing development at Dowd's Farm

 "If we don't accept this plan, it will be a developers' free for all and no green field will be safe from development."  Such was part of the argument used by the local Lib Dem leadership in bulldozing through their housing plans to impose at least 2,400 and possibly up to 6,000 new houses on green fields in the Hedge End, West End and Botley local area.

But the Lib Dems are guilty of presenting a false dilemma.  The choice is not between their plan and no plan.  The choice is between a bad plan and a better plan.

What makes the current proposals a bad plan is the inexplicable u-turn executed by the Lib Dems in adopting a small number of large scale "strategic development options" when they have campaigned against Strategic Development Areas and Major Development Areas in the past.

The impact of new housing on the existing infrastructure (roads, services, schools etc.) would be less invasive if the the new developments were spread more evenly throughout the borough instead of being concentrated in three locations.  It would also give existing communities and settlements the chance to grow organically without fundamentally changing their character, a fate which is possibly awaiting Boorley Green.
Let us accept for the moment the Council's target of 9,400 new houses and their assessment that 4,700 of these will have to be built on countryside locations.

They could reach their target by assigning 1,200 of the green field houses to sites near the urban centre of Eastleigh Town and Chandlers Ford and then distributing the remainder evenly throughout the nine southern parishes at the rate of about 400 per parish.

They could then engage in a more meaningful consultation in each parish allowing the local people to rank the identified locations in order of preference.  People in Hedge End might still vote in favour of building on the farmland at Woodhouse Lane, or they might prefer one of the other sites identified by the planners.  If the first choice does not have sufficient capacity to accommodate the 400 target houses, then the second or third choice locations would be added to the list until the required capacity is reached.

It might mean more work for the planners and a harder time for the developers, but it would be fairer and more democratic for the people of Hedge End.

New Job for Cllr Keith House

Congratulations to Hedge End Town Councillor, Bursledon Parish Councillor, Leader of Eastleigh Borough Council and Leader of the Lib Dem Group on Hampshire County Council, Keith House on landing another job.

The Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors announced on Monday that he has been elected Lead Lib Dem Member of the Local Government Association's Environment and Housing Programme Board.

I thought I'd have a browse of the LGA's web site to see what this new role entails:

Programme board members

Accountabilities

• To actively engage with councils and groupings of councils to secure the views and involvement of the wider membership to inform the board’s priorities and policy lines and act as an advocate for the LG Group and its work.
• To attend and actively participate in programme board meetings
• To attend conferences and other events initiated by the programme board.
• To read and understand all board papers in advance of the meeting, and to keep abreast of all developments locally and nationally in relation to the areas covered by the programme board.
• Where required, to take responsibility for a specified portfolio and act as spokesperson

Knowledge and Experience

Programme board members may be portfolio holders for that policy area in their home authorities or have experience/knowledge of, and commitment to, the policy area(s) covered by the programme board.

Travel and expenses

This role will require attendances at meetings in London and in other parts of the country.
Travel and subsistence costs incurred in attending programme boards meetings should be met by the member’s home authority.

Remuneration
Current programme board members’ allowance:   £2,593
Expected time commitment:      up to 0.5 days per week

Lib Dems Keep Hedge End in the Dark

Lib Dems did not want members of the public at the Town Council meeting to discuss the new housing plans for Hedge End.  As I blogged on 1st August, the discussion was deemed to be exempt business under the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 after Council Leader Keith House decreed that any briefing by council officials had to be confidential, and that section of the meeting was not recorded in the official minutes.

It's a pity, because I thought I asked some pretty pertinent questions:
 
Q. It is clear that 1,000 houses at Woodhouse Lane and possibly 1,400 at Boorley Green will put unsustainable strain on the Maypole Roundabout and roads to the M27.   Will the planned housing bring in sufficient developers' contributions to improve those roads, or will Hedge End be asked to accept even more housing in order to generate funds for the increased road capacity?

A. #### CENSORED BY LIB DEMS ####

Q. People moving into the new housing at Hedge End will need somewhere to work.  If 1,000 houses are built on our green fields, will Hedge End have to sacrifice even more countryside for employment purposes?

A. #### CENSORED BY LIB DEMS ####

Q. In addition to the three major strategic sites, Eastleigh is looking to build 1,000 more houses across the whole borough on "small" green field sites.  In the interest of fairness, why should any of these 1,000 additional houses be targeted on the Hedge End, West End and Botley area, which is already going to take 2,400?

A. #### CENSORED BY LIB DEMS ####

Q. In the Strategic Land Availability Assessment, all the sites in Hedge End which are close to the motorway are considered  inappropriate for housing.  Yet in neighbouring West End, the Council has permitted housing right up to the motorway with approprate noise mitigation.  Why do different standards apply?

A. #### CENSORED BY LIB DEMS ####

Next time Lib Dem candidates come knocking on your door, see if you can get an answer from them. 

Hedge End Bursting its Boundaries

Beautiful countryside between Hedge End and Botley is threatened by the Lib Dems housing plans.

Eastleigh Council's map of "small greenfield sites" in Hedge End shows a number of locations to the east of Hedge End in the local gap between Hedge End and Botley (labelled HE6 to HE11) which have been designated possible development targets.

Although the Lib Dems voted in July to accept these as Hedge End locations, they are technically the other side of the administrative border between Hedge End and Botley parish.  Presumably the Council planners know where the boundary is, so why did they not categorise them as Botley locations?

The same thing has happened on the other side of Hedge End where green fields to the north and west of Hedge End which are technically in West End are in the Hedge End allocation.  (See previous blog entries here and here.)

And to the south, a number of green fields in the Bursledon parish area are counted as Hedge End sites.  

In fact, if I have done the calculations correctly, only thirteen of the 31 identified Hedge End sites are actually inside the  Hedge End administrative boundary, and only 34% (3799 out of  11185) of the potential housing slots assessed are formally in Hedge End.

In real life the administrative boundaries between parishes are a fairly insignificant planning technicality.   So why has the Council misled people in this way?  

One possibility is that by exaggerating how many green fields there are in Hedge End it makes it look as if we can "afford" to accept a thousand houses at Woodhouse Lane because there is still plenty of green space left. 

But the fact is that under the developer-friendly Lib Dems the settlement of Hedge End has already expanded up to, and in some cases over, its administrative borders with neighbouring parishes and the Woodhouse Lane location is the last area of countryside inside Hedge End's borders.

Library to Charge Youngsters

Fining pre-school children is a bad idea according to local Hedge End councillor, and leader of the Lib Dem opposition at Hampshire County Council, Keith House.

 

Commenting on Hampshire Conservatives' plan to charge children for the late return of library books Cllr House revealed an alarming statistic.

 

“Charging late fees for children is a reading tax. This all covers up the more amazing fact that the county has lost 30,000 books in recent years.  The council should concentrate on tracking down these rather than discouraging children reading."

 

 Perhaps a well-publicised amnesty would encourage adults to return some of those 30,000 books rather than putting more pressure on families already struggling with reduced income and higher prices for everything from food to electricity.

Read the full story here.