Early this morning, right outside the NHS Elmleigh Hospital, New Lane was completely blocked by a stranded Amazon ‘line-haul’ truck. With its trailer parked right across the road and its driving wheels embedded in what used to be a grass verge, it wasn’t going anywhere without some serious haulage heft.
Meanwhile, the grass verges on the hospital side were being well and truly chewed up by frustrated drivers trying to access the hospital or just get past the blockage.
Our local Hampshire County Councillors have both been fully engaged with the Amazon site since its appearance as an anonymous planning application four years ago. As our elected representatives at the authority responsible for Highways and traffic matters, they might like to try and tot up the safety issues visible in the following video:
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is a serious point that we need to keep focus on. The operations at 32 New Lane are considered by local residents represented on the ‘Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel (CLP)’ to be in breach of three of the conditions applied to the planning consent , specifically, conditions ‘4‘, ‘9‘, and ‘10‘. The responsibility for that non-compliance must be shared equally by HBC and Amazon, but both would prefer to simply forget about it.
HCS first escalated the inevitability of this breach of planning conditions before the ink was even dry on the planning consent in February 2022, three years ago. The DPO1 CLP also escalated this to HBC Planning Services in January 2024 but still there is absolutely no visible sign of any action.
The Amazon DPO1 Community Liaison Panel stands as a unique entity within the entire Amazon UK Services logistics network, created in acknowledgment that DPO1 is the sole delivery station in the UK established within a residential area. The panel was set up to satisfy another condition of the planning consent, condition ‘30‘, which reads:
“To provide residents and stakeholders an opportunity to feedback to the site operators on the effectiveness of the arrangements in place. Comments received will be used to make improvements to the site operations and address issues that arise as and where appropriate.”
It seems likely that both parties, HBC and Amazon UK Services, could be considered in breach of that condition also and they can both rest assured that the residents will remain firmly on the case.
Havant Civic Society 