POLICE are appealing for witnesses after a man died and another was seriously hurt in a head-on collision in Beech, near Alton, on Wednesday.

The crash involved a black Peugeot 307 and a grey Volkswagen Passat shortly after 7am outside Hillside Nurseries on the A339 Basingstoke road.

The Peugeot was heading to Basingstoke from Alton when it was in collision with the Volkswagen, going the other way. The driver of the Peugeot, a 25-year-old man from Gosport, died at the scene.

The front-seat passenger, a man also in his 20s, was injured and taken to North Hampshire Hospital at Basingstoke where he is being treated for serious injuries. The driver and front-seat passenger in the Passat suffered minor injuries.

No arrests were made.

The road was expected to remain closed until around 1pm to enable collision investigators to examine the scene and arrange for the vehicles to be recovered.

Witnesses are asked to call Sergeant Alex Rawdon-Smith at Totton police on 101, quoting Operation Fedora.