HAMPSHIRE County Council (HCC) has said its highways officers were unable, under current legislation, to support residents’ concerns over a planning application that will see yet more heavy lorries pounding the narrow, sunken lanes around Gilbert White’s historic Selborne.

As reported last week’s Alton Herald, the application by prospective tenant Mary Sweere, for change of use at Albury Dairy in Honey Lane, Blackmoor, of redundant silage store and slurry pit from agricultural use to wood-chip drying B2 (general industry) was passed under delegated (officer) power following an agreement over access.

The compromise was reached after Hampshire Highways pulled the rug from under the feet of local planners by raising no objection to the proposal.

By so doing it took away any powers the planners would have had to fight the application through the appeal process, triggering fierce criticism of a system that encourages comment on applications in isolation but fails to take into account the accumulated impact of additional traffic from a number of sites on the surrounding road network, however unsuitable.

Responding to this criticism, an HCC spokesperson said: “In our role as the highway authority, we recently considered the application for a change of use at the Albury Dairy site and the potential impact on the access and surrounding roads network. Under planning rules, where there is existing established development and vehicle access rights, the county council can only consider the net increase in traffic to be generated by any proposed change in providing highways advice to the planning authority.

“In this case, the supporting planning statement confirmed that there would be no change to current traffic levels or patterns, including heavy goods vehicle movements. In addition, the National Planning Policy Framework has raised the level of impact which must be demonstrated in order for a valid highways objection to be sustained to a proposed development; the impact of this proposal, with no projected change to existing traffic levels or patterns, fell well short of this criteria. Therefore, we had no acceptable highways reason to object to this planning application.”