Although the Government's "formal" consultation has ended, please continue to express your views to MPs, Councillors, national and local amentiy groups, the press and your neighbours.
Key points to emphasise:
Locating an eco-town at Whitehill-Bordon will fail to meet the Government’s criteria:
It would not be a new, separate and distinct settlement, but an extension to an existing town;
§This would double the population to over 30,000, creating more urbanisation but no sense of living in a unified sustainable settlement.
There is no clear capacity for or commitment to pubic transport links to a higher order centre, which lies over 20 miles away;
§ No rail link is proposed. The proposals include new road building, with more traffic on existing roads in an area where car use is already very high. This conflicts with the eco-town objectives.
§ The extended town cannot be zero carbon without unsustainable spending to upgrade homes, shops and workplaces in the existing town, build new roads and develop other infrastructure.
§ There is no realistic prospect of or commitment to such a level of investment.
This town already has a high proportion of affordable housing. Including 40% or more affordable units in new development would worsen the existing socio-economic imbalance in the town.
§ An eco-town will not solve these problems. The Council’s aim of attracting more executive housing conflicts with providing more affordable housing.
Residential development on the scale proposed lacks local community support. The Council has ignored the results of its own consultation on this.
Local people have voted for reuse of redundant military land on a scale much smaller than this proposal.
§ Expansion on the scale proposed would substantially and irrevocably damage the many sites of protected ecology and biodiversity.
Further points
§ The Council’s threat that a much larger amount of uncontrolled development would take place without an eco-town is scaremongering.
All development proposals must be subject to the normal planning process, as illustrated by the successful development of MoD land at Liphook.
The sustainable option for Whitehill-Bordon is to limit future development to redundant built up MoD land. This can only accommodate up to 2000 new homes.