If you’re one of the 20,000 patients of the Bosmere Medical Centre, this directly affects you.

~ HCS Editor

After two years of public silence by our Councillors, the long awaited planning application for the new Portsmouth Water Company headquarters building at the back of the Bosmere Medical Centre in Solent Road has finally been loaded to the Havant Borough Council Planning ‘Public Access’ portal.

While several alternative access points have been suggested, Portsmouth Water are insisting on driving the site traffic straight through through the already constrained Solent Road entrance to the Bosmere Medical Centre.

With GP surgery hours dictated by their NHS Contract, it just happens that visits to the surgery must already coincide with peak time traffic in Solent Road. If this application goes ahead, then the doctors, staff and you, the patients are going to have to fight for access with the Portsmouth Water HQ staff and four new industrial units.

We’re not going to waste time repeating ourselves here, so we suggest that you read the following posts by clicking the links in order. They will open in separate browser tabs. Each of the posts contains information which will help you understand the history of this application and give you background detail from which to make comments on the application.

The link to the planning system Comments page for this application is included at the bottom of this post, immediately after the map below.

The objections raised at the Development Consultation Forum on October 22nd two years ago have remained unanswered and the St Faith’s Councillors have remained unanimously tight-lipped in the face of repeated requests for transparency over Portsmouth Water’s master plan for the centre of Havant.

In the old days, the ‘Portsmouth Water Company’ was a local business which residents were proud to fund for the service they gave. Today, as ‘Portsmouth Water’, it’s just another privately owned utility maximising its shareholder dividends by flogging off the land around us, unopposed by a council that appears to care more about housing numbers than it does about residents’ health or the working conditions of one of our largest, town-centre NHS GP practices.

To make a comment on this planning application, please click on this link. You have until Friday August 27th to add your comments.

Remember, you have a right to make your voice heard. You pay your Council Tax, you contribute to Portsmouth Water’s profits, and there are times when we all need the overstretched resources of our GP Practices.

On a day when it’s been announced that ‘Home Bargains’ will be opening up in the Solent Road retail park in October, it’s worth us all reflecting on just how much worse Havant’s town centre traffic could get.

While we’re on the topic of traffic, if you’ve not already made your views known on the Pfizer site application, take a look at this link and join in. Traffic planning and traffic management simply isn’t one of Havant Borough Council’s strong points.

If you’re new to commenting on planning application, take a look at this post for a bit of guidance.

#rethinkhavant