Alton Town Council will hold an extraordinary council meeting on August 6 to decide its response to East Hampshire District Council on developer Redbrown’s plan to build 160 houses in Holybourne.
The town council is a consultee in the planning process. Its meeting will follow an “open village planning meeting” to discuss the proposal being staged by the Holybourne Village Association at Holy Rood Church on July 22 at 7pm.
This outline planning application seeks to establish the principle of developing the 13-acre site behind numbers 136 to 150 London Road. Approval of it would all but guarantee development.
A spokesperson for the Holybourne Village Association said: “It is important for as many people as possible to give their opinion and this meeting will serve to show how you can go about it - please try to make it to the meeting.”
Don Hammond, the Alton town councillor for Holybourne, said: “The planning application for Holybourne is an indicator of what is to come. The proposal for 160 houses in Holybourne is out of proportion to this small village.
“Much of the village is a conservation area and this development would have a serious effect on that. The traffic on London Road through the village is already bad and this development would make it much worse.
“The Redbrown planning application will be vigorously opposed by residents.”
He said: “The way the South Downs National Park is dealt with for housing allocations skews the housing numbers in the rest of the district and puts unreasonable pressure on other areas.
“Because it is entirely within the national park, Petersfield cannot have any significant development. This seems ridiculous - a reasonably sized town that cannot grow.
“This leaves Alton as the remaining tier one settlement in the district and we are being expected to take very large numbers of new homes - too many. So we have a lot of development coming our way.”
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