Bordon Area Action Group

What do you like about the masterplan?

It contains proposals for redeveloping MOD brownfield land (as defined in PPG3) if it becomes vacant. It contains cycle paths and a museum.  All can be undertaken now without overexpansion.

What do you not like about the masterplan?

It fails all of the Government's original eco-town criteria.  It disguises proposals for gross overexpansion onto greenfield sites, including playing fields, Hogmoor Inclosure, Standford Farm in an adjoining ancient settlment within the neighbouring parish of Headley, BOSC woodland and other MOD green areas.  It contains many promised benefits, some of which are only consequent on overexpansion, with no confirmed funding.  It fails to reflect the local community's preferences.  Average housing density is excessive and fails to respect existing character.  It accepts there is no possibility of achieving zero/low carbon footprint across the whole town.  There is nothing "eco" about it that will not be applicable to all new UK housing and development.  It implies controlling behaviour and lifestyle for existing residents that will not apply to other settlements.  It envisages unachievable car use, transport and job targets. Its fundamentals, such as quantum of housing, have been reached and put to government in secret and excluded from public consultation. It threatens the rural quality, lifestyle and biodiversity of the whole town. It extinguishes agricultural land, excludes provision for locally grown produce and allotments and fails to address the problem of long distance food miles or the stranglehold of the entire food chain by the big supermarkets.  It will blight the town for decades and act as a disincentive to people to move to the area.  It fails to respect or preserve the integrity, environment or heritage of surrounding settlements. It fails to substantiate claims of 'critical mass' needed to bring new facilities many of which have been provided at public expense in nearby towns of comparable size. It fails to indicate amount or sources of funding.  It fails to identify all historic structures. It fails to commit to a "jobs before housing" policy. 

How do you think the masterplan can be improved?

Tear it up and start again from a position of brownfield replacement and planned incremental growth only, up to 2000 new homes with associated infrastructure/facilities already present in comparable settlements.  Retain and recondition if necessary the existing Mill Chase School.

How much information  have you seen?

All + read and researched extensively from readily available govenment, local authority, stakeholder and international material, consulted with hundreds of townspeople, consultants, politicians, EHDC, other eco-town groups, media and professionals.

Any other comments?

The plan is unsustainable and harmful to the rural community, wider area, region and green movement.  Its failure will set joined up green thinking back considerably.  The entire process has been misconceived, mismanaged and misleading.  It should have been non-partisan from the start, reflecting the genuine aspirations and concerns of local people.  Instead it has been "top down," driven largely by remotely controlled haggling between EHDC Defence Estates, Hampshire County Council, government departments, quangos and distant official stakeholders.  Greatest weight should be given to local community concerns.

In general do you support the masterplan?

I knew a gal named Peggy Sue

Looking for a home, didn’t have a clue

They sent her to a place not far away

But now she’s broken hearted

‘Cause once they got her started

They left her there and now she has to stay

Chorus           

She’s got the eco-town blues

            She’s got the eco-town blues

            They told her once, they told her twice

            It’s gonna be so awfully nice-

            She’s got the eco-town blues

Well Peggy got her an eco flat

With a little green door and a welcome mat

She thought the top floor view was really swell

But soon the kids were crying

And there was no denying

She wished she could be free from eco-hell

Cho.

Now Peggy waits in the wind and rain

For the eco-bus that never came

The eco-shops they built are empty too

So now’s the time to worry

This ain’t no fairy story

The eco-cops are comin’ after you

Cho.

Engineer

Although I actually returned the EHDC original survey to indicate the <2000 homes option I had remained on the fringes of the ecotown opposition until yesterday evening's presentation. I believe it achieved the fundamental aim to draw to the attention of the 'average' inhabitant of Whitehill/Bordon the shear folly of green dreams of creating a carbon neutral town within our boundaries. As an engineer I am constantly exposed to providing 'sustainable' solutions & a vast majority in reality are nothing more than token gestures or ego inflaters for certain elements of our society.

Resident 

If I wanted to live in a big town I would have stayed living in Guildford but I moved down here because it's nice, please do not let these faceless people make a mess of Bordon and Whitehill and do we want another Milton Keynes?  A number of proposals for traffic routes and possible centres for the town have been concocted but how many local residents will lose their homes to carry out these plans? Are there any estimates?

Resident

I am doing research into the bio-diversity of Headley Parish for the Parish plan--one of the SINCS-sites of interest for Nature Conservation is Eveley Wood which is designated by H.C.C'S Bio-diversity section as Ancient Woodland. The other SINC on the Headley/Bordon border is on the Hollywater and Walldown Roadside verges where the Notable species of the nationally scarce Green-flowered Helleborine[Epipactis phyllanthes] has been recorded. I think we will be very lucky if it has survived all the recent upheavals. I hope this information may be useful in your campaign. I also heard that Natural England were very concerned about the water supply to the proposed new eco-town, as they did not consider that the present bore-hole would be able to cope.

Civilian MOD job holder

Personally, every mention of the MOD land being vacated is a reminder to me that my job will go with the Army; indeed, not just my job, but the jobs of hundreds of MOD, Vosper Thorneycroft and Aramark employees that currently serve SEME and the Bordon Garrison. No one seems to be taking an interest in the fact that vast majority of us at SEME are under direct threat of redundancy or relocation to South Wales. I am Bordon born and bred, my family have lived here for generations, I have a young family that will all be at crucial stages in their primary and secondary education when all this comes to pass. No one seems to be fighting my corner, so it is time to stand up for myself and my community.

Sir- I would like to commend John Ilett’s excellent letter in last week’s edition.  He is not the only one to doubt East Hampshire District Council’s claim of “overwhelming public support,” or to have hit a stone wall when it comes to getting some factual answers out of the Council.  For example, can they claim that 250 hectares are available for development where, by their own published figure, just 80 hectares are MoD brownfield land?  Why have they never admitted that most of the few responses to their previous consultation efforts were opposed to dropping, as Ilett puts it, a population the size of Petersfield’s into Bordon?  Why are EHDC and our local MP backing what every other authority and their local MP sees as a politically motivated threat to their environment?  Is it a coincidence that EHDC’s target numbers coincide exactly with the Government’s minimum eco-town requirement?  Where did that number come from?

Even a schoolchild could work our that if you try to cram 5,500 houses onto 80 hectares, with not a single existing building retained, you get nearly 70 units per hectare.  An average occupancy of 4 per unit, gives a figure of 275 people per hectare, or an urban density comparable to many parts of Inner London.  That sort of density requires most of the units to be in multi-storey flats.  Add in 40% “affordable” housing and you have a recipe for a high density ghetto totally at odds with the rest of Bordon let alone any country town.  

How will local roads cope with the additional 5,500 or more cars and the service vehicle trips these houses will generate, even if, as the promoters claim they will be used less?  How can all this development still safeguard the protected ecology and wildlife of several sites around Bordon?  The consequences of failing to insist on answers to these questions and more will be that the Bordon of the future will be worse than the Bordon of the present- only bigger.