Voters Wooed in Wildern

Candidates are shaping up and the first leaflets have been exchanged for the Wildern ward by election on 13th February.

Ray Turner (the independent candidate), Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP have all been active this weekend. Nothing from the Tories yet, but I see on Twitter that a fallen tree was blocking the drive to their plush HQ in Upper Northam Close. Perhaps they were all stuck in the billiard room. Or are they planning to give their coalition cronies another easy ride?

Some people have told me, "It's only a Town Council by election." But the Town Council has a budget of over £900,000 and a council tax precept of over £600,000. Voters in Wildern ward are being given the chance to have a say on who decides how to spend that money. I hope there is a reasonable turnout and whoever is elected has a real mandate from the people.

MP Takes Town Council Badger Concerns to Secretary of State

Hedge End's MP Mike Thornton has offered to make the Town Council's views about the Coalition's disastrous badger cull policy known to the Secretary of State.

In November the Council supported an excellently researched resolution proposed by badger friendly Cllr Rupert Kyrle, pointing out the scientific shortcomings of the Coalition cull policy. Triple-hatted Cllr Kyrle had already steered his resolution through debates at Hampshire County and Eastleigh Borough Councils. As a result all three levels of local government for Hedge End have agreed that culling would not be permitted on their land if the Government decides in the future to extend the cull to Hampshire.

Hedge End Town Council took things one step further though, and supported my amendment to make its decision known to our MP and request that he oppose any extension of the cull in parliament.

At December's council meeting, the Town Clerk read Mike Thornton's reply. Although careful not to commit himself to voting one way or another, Mike pointed out that he had signed Early Day Motion 299. This motion attempts to ensure that MPs will have a vote on any extension of the cull.

He also offered to make Hedge End Town Council's views known to the Secretary of State at the appropriate time. The badgers killed in the 2013 pilot culls were not tested for bovine TB, so there has been no improvement to our knowledge of how prevalent the cow disease is in the wild badger population. What is more, as the culls failed, there are fears they may have increased the risk to cattle herds in the pilot areas.

Let's hope "Mike4Eastleigh" is also "Mike4Badgers" in 2014. By the way Mike, there is a new Early Day Motion on the subject for you to sign.

Picture credit: BadgerHero

Lib Dems Let Down Local Scouts

Grange Park scouts are worried that they will lose their HQ because the Lib Dem local plan doesn't even acknowledge it exists. Policy HE3 in the plan seeks to move the Household Waste Recycling Centre in Shamblehurst Lane to a new, more suitable location and free up the land for housing. So far so good, but there is no mention of the scout building which currently occupies part of the site earmarked for houses. Representatives of the scout group came to Hedge End Town Council this week to seek reassurance.

Lib Dem Cllr Paul Carnell confirmed there was no mention of the fate of the scout facilities in the version of the local plan considered by the Highways and Planning committee the previous week, so the Town Council's official response to the local plan will not take it into account.

County Councillor for Grange Park, Bruce Tennant, thought the scout HQ had "just slipped through" the local plan.

The Lib Dem leader, Cllr Keith House, admitted it "probably should have been in the plan", but urged the scouts to see it as an "opportunity, not a threat".

The scouts made clear that it is not just the building that is threatened but the land surrounding it where they provide outside activities for young people in Grange Park.  It is not immediately clear where there is an available parcel of land of the same size nearby that the Borough Council could give to the scouts in compensation for their planning blunder.

The Lib Dems plan does take account of facilities used by another scout group, this time in Bursledon. Policy BU3 has an explicit condition that the proposed development will protect those facilities, but HE3 does not do the same for the Grange Park group. Is this another example of local Lib Dems paying more attention to their constituents in Bursledon and Hamble, while taking Hedge End voters for granted?

Fury as Lib Dems Jump the Gun

Eastleigh Lib Dems' local plan consultation got off to a dodgy start this evening. Despite advertising a meeting to start at 7:00pm (see extract from Autumn Borough News, left), Eastleigh Lib Dems decided to kick off soon after 6:00pm.

There has been criticism of previous consultations that they were not adequately publicised. It's a major own goal when the Lib Dems contrive to make their own house publication inaccurate and untrustworthy.

A Hedge End resident who wanted to speak at tonight's meeting was furious that they had been deprived of the opportunity because they believed what was in Borough News and so turned up too late. They told me they felt the democratic credentials of the consultation process had been questioned by the council cock up. So much for Lib Dem transparency when residents are told to turn up when most of the debate was over.

Developers Annexe Hedge End Grass Verge

Linden Homes are allowing their contractors to use the grass verge along Turnpike Way as a convenient car park, unloading yard and general extension of their development site. Contractors including Kamm Civil Engineering, Reywell Daggert and SSE have been parking their cars, vans, trucks and other equipment on ground that is getting softer with the recent rain.

According to the site plan at the entrance to the development there is a car park off the road that they should be using. The grass verge is a public amenity, does not belong to Linden Homes and they have no right to use it in this antisocial way.

This was confirmed by the leader of Eastleigh Borough Council and member of Hedge End Town Council, Cllr Keith House, when Cllr Jenny Hughes and I raised it as an issue at September's meeting of the Town Council. Cllr House said he would "chase it". That was back on 18 September. These photos were taken on 2 October.

Tory Land Flip Flop Dooms Hedge End Fields

Green Field or Party Political Football?

Tories at Hampshire County Council have changed their minds and are now willing to release green field land they own at Woodhouse Lane for housing. Perhaps I am too cynical about party politics, but it is pretty obvious the Tories said one thing before the May 2013 elections and now with four years before the next county council elections they turn their backs on the Botley and Hedge End countryside.

Predictably local Lib Dems, including cabinet members Cllrs Keith House and Louise Bloom have jumped at the chance to concrete over the last remaining area of agricultural land in Hedge End. At Thursday's cabinet meeting the Lib Dems were unanimous in adopting a strategy that puts 800 more houses in Hedge End.

What is worse, the Lib Dems got their numbers wrong in the first version of the local plan, and they now need to build over a thousand more houses in Fair Oak and Horton Heath.

Perhaps the least edifying aspect of the cabinet meeting was the party political spat between Cllr House and Cllr Olson, the leader of the Chandlers Ford and Hiltingbury Tories, over whether the county council u-turn is the first or second time they have flip flopped on this.

Meanwhile there was hardly any debate about the merits of alternative locations, such as the eyesore car boot sale land near Windhover Roundabout. This land is of little environmental value, is not used for agricultural purposes, and is right on the doorstep of the employment possibilities in Southampton. And existing bus routes go right past it. How is that less sustainable than Woodhouse Lane?

New Lib Dem Attack on Green Fields

Local protesters opposed Lib Dem "huge housing plans"

Eastleigh Lib Dems' first attempt at drafting a new local plan in 2012 ended in embarrassment. It is not clear if the Lib Dems were incompetent and did not check that land at Woodhouse Lane owned by the County Council would be available for housing. It may be that Hampshire Conservatives wanted to play political games and changed their mind about whether to release the land, as the Lib Dems claimed at last week's Town Council meeting.

Whatever the reason, the Lib Dems were left with a plan that was short of nearly 2000 houses according to their own calculations of how many houses will be needed in Eastleigh by 2029. And they are having to go through the local plan process a second time, with a new version of the plan due to be published for consultation soon.

The last consultation was incomplete and inadequate as some Hedge End residents pointed out. Others discovered too late that the Lib Dems had decided to put a site for travelling show people at the bottom of their gardens. The Lib Dems then shut down my attempts to have an alternative proposal debated at Town Council.

So where are the Lib Dems planning to put the houses this time? Cabinet has six options to decide from at its special meeting on Thursday (26 September).

Option A is the area of open land between the Windhover roundabout and the boundary with Southampton, much of which is currently used for car boot sales, and is of little value in terms of biodiversity, landscape or heritage.

Option B would extend Horton Heath into green fields to the south and west. The additional traffic generated by nearly 2000 houses would come through Hedge End to get to the motorway, and it would put the fields between Horton Heath and Boorley Green at risk of infill development.

Option C would extend the already planned massive develpoment at Boorley Green west into green fields to the north of the railway at Hedge End.

Option D spreads the required housing across four sites: one would extend the Boorley Green development into green fields to the south, the second would use some of the land in Option B, with the rest to the south of Bishopstoke and to the north of Fair Oak.

Option E would distribute the new houses across three sites; to the north of Fair Oak, south and west of Horton Heath and, based on the assumption that the County Council will change their mind, 800 houses on the green fields at Woodhouse Lane.

Option F shuffles some of the same cards to share the development between Boorley Green, Fair Oak and Horton Heath. 

What could embarrass the Lib Dems even more is that some of these sites are in the area to the north of Hedge End that they were claiming to have "saved" from development as recently as July this year.