Slow It Down: Stop Overdevelopment ( a non party based petition to Basingstoke Council ).

Basingstoke and Deane has played more than its’ fair share in housing the nation, with homes for an extra 150,000 people in the past five decades, double the rate of the rest of the country. The current Borough build rate has crept up to an unsustainable 1,200 new homes a year. This exceeds levels in the Local Plan, well beyond the needs of our community, stretching the capacity of the NHS and damaging the safety of our natural environment.

Our community wants this rapid growth to slow down to give local services like our Hospital and GPs time to catch up with the increase in demand; and the Council time to form a better plan to protect the local natural environment. The next local plan must cut new house building levels in half, so we meet the needs of our own local residents, not those of other local authorities too.

Basingstoke is an exception: we have consistently overbuilt in comparison to other communities in the South East. There are provisions in law that the Borough Council can use to justify change, including establishing new policies on migration levels, and using ‘exceptional circumstances’ and ‘strong reasons’ as provisions set out in the National Planning Policy Framework Paragraphs 61 and 11b.

The next Local Plan needs a complete shift of focus, away from high levels of house building and onto what our existing residents need: expanding services for our rapidly ageing population, the regeneration of existing housing stock, new ways for local residents to access affordable homes and to safeguard the natural environment.

You can back this call for change now by adding your name to the ‘Slow It Down’ Petition. 


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4 months ago

I’m being told on Twitter we have a national crisis, we aren’t building the 300k houses a year we need. It’s all the fault of those pesky NIMBYs. Meanwhile elephant in the corner of the room ‘Over 1.1 million homes with planning permission waiting to be built - new LGA analysis’The system is broken if developers can pick and choose when to bring forward developments. All safe in the knowledge that as soon as targets slip, Local Plans go out of the window. ... See MoreSee Less
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4 months ago

The Levelling Up and Regeneration bill is currently winding it’s way through Parliament. This bill is a fundamental step forward in giving local authorities back control of regeneration and powers to bring forward the right kind of development and punish developers who slow walk their developments. However, it is not enough. We need more control to set our own local housing requirement and not have artificially imposed numbers mandated from central government. This is not NIMBYism, this is about sharing the burden, it is not right that Basingstoke & Deane has unnatural growth rates in excess of 10%, almost double the national average. This is about slowing down growth to allow our infrastructure to catch up, our GPs, our roads, our schools. I am heartened to see Theresa Villiers amendment to the bill is now before Parliament and I am glad to see Dame Maria Miller MP is a signatory to this. I will be writing this evening to Ranil Jayawardena MP as my constituency MP, asking that he add his support to this most excellent amendment. I would recommend if group members live in bordering constituencies, NE & NW Hants, to please do add your support to convincing our MPs about the soundness of this amendment. ... See MoreSee Less
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