Bloor Homes, the Derbyshire based national house builder, is now pushing ahead with HBC Planning Services in the notorious ‘Pre-planning’ stage, the stage at which HBC typically dig themselves and the town into a large hole.
Take note of the ‘BloorSouthleigh’ website, which will open in a new browser tab if you click the image below:
At the moment, the website contains little content apart from advance notice of two planned publicity events next week, details for which are shown below. If you’re interested, make a note to save the date.
Why is this important?
Havant Borough Council’s ambition to develop what used to be called ‘the Emsworth Gap‘ is no secret. However, there is one particularly large fly in the ointment here and that is the missing link – the Southleigh link road.
If the subject of the Southleigh Gap and the missing Southleigh Link road is of interest, and it should be – then you should look for the detail on the Bloor Homes plans at next week’s exhibitions and make your comments known to HBC as part of the ‘Building a Better Future’ Local Plan Consultation. Click that link to see the detail and pay particular attention to the ‘Interbridges West‘ development site, the only logical site available to construct the ‘Havant East’ full access A27 junction that is desperately needed to link Bartons Road in the north with the south coast trunk road.
If you’re concerned about this proposal, contact your ward councillors and ask them to ensure that HBC Planning Services set up a full Development Consultation Forum to enable you to air those concerns along with the rest of the community.
Havant Civic Society 
Having lived in Emsworth on the A259 for over 42 years, now living in Havant for the last 3 years, we have seen the traffic along the A259 grow and grow and see many times when the A27 has to close because of accidents, seen the additional impact – gridlock – because there is nowhere else for the traffic to go. The character of Emsworth has changed hugely to being a tourist attraction, with the knock-on effect on parking in the ‘village’. The local infrastructure just is not there for yet more houses, with the cars that come with them, to cope with yet more homes. Already the little bit of green space is becoming eroded and less accessible for those who want to have a lovely walk in the country. We already have traffic jams down Southleigh Road when the level crossing gates shut for minutes at a time. Even if there is a new junction onto the A27, that will not help much, we need bridges over the railway. The time has come to preserve the uniqueness of our towns and villages, and leave them as recognisable units on their own, instead of being one long stretch of houses from Chichester to Southampton. It is time to consider a ‘new town’ instead, which can include all that is needed for a full life.
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I understand Bloor is expected to take the 2017 Masterplan as their starting point.
The draft local plan states “3.18 The site promoter’s masterplan will be expected to take the 2017 published Framework Masterplan as a starting point. Nonetheless, this will need to be updated taking into account policy and regulatory changes since then and informed by further public engagement. The final agreed Masterplan and Design Guide/Code will need to be submitted with any planning application.”
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