THE Anstey Residents’ Group and its companion website are calling it a day and will be putting up the shutters for the final time at the end of February.

One of the forerunners of local residents’ groups, and providing a lively and informative online forum, Anstey Residents’ Group was founded in August 2009 by Tony Souter in response to the threat of development on the Coors Sports Gound (later to morph into Molson Coors) on Anstey Road.

The first application was for a new supermarket following the relocation of football activities to Anstey Park.

A small group of concerned residents banded together to fight the proposal.

The next seven years saw a series of skirmishes with Molson Coors, East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) planners and Alton Town Council over a range of proposals for the site, with the resulting impact on Anstey Park.

In spite of its early success, the sports ground has been sold for the development of 85 new homes.

Mr Souter said: “Anstey Residents’ Group, with the innovative use of its website and mass e-mailing facility, did much to change the nature of single-issue protest in the town and pioneered a new breed of pressure group with an active website as its nucleus. Endowed with such a powerful way of reaching the electorate, it was only natural that we should spread our net to encompass most things Altonian.”

As a result, its sphere of interest expanded to include wider scrutiny of the actions of the town council and a ‘Have Your Say’ blog became a place to find out what was happening in the town and post reaction to it.

“Anstey Residents’ Group always sought to articulate an independent view on the various shenanigans of our elected representatives and attempt to hold them to account,” he said.

January’s stats recorded 3,922 visits to the website.

While Anstey Residents’ Group has never been a conventional residents’ association, in that it has never had a formal membership, “we are more a flagpole around which people gathered”, said Mr Souter.

“It has demonstrated what was possible with a vibrant interactive website and seen the emergence of other residents’ organisations and their websites,” said Mr Souter, who believes it is “testament to a desire for engagement in town affairs”.

In explaining his decision to bow out of Anstey Residents’ Group and its website, the Alton resident pointed out that Miller Homes had now begun work on the sports ground which marks a natural end to the group’s involvement.