Who really runs Havant Borough Council?

The staff, patients and customers of the largest GP practice in the borough and one of the busiest extended-hours pharmacies in Hampshire would very much like to know. At the Planning Committee meeting on 26 June, we will be closer to an answer to that question.

If recent history is anything to go by, the most likely answer to the question in the headline will be Portsmouth Water, sharing that role with the usual array of national housebuilders.

As far as Portsmouth Water is concerned, the Bosmere Medical Centre and the independent extended-hours Bosmere Pharmacy which shares its entrance on Solent Road, appear to be just inconvenient squatters on yet another of the ransom strips it set down years ago to maximise the value of its local landholdings.

The right of the two important town centre healthcare facilities to be engaged with the planning process has been ignored for the past five years by both the company and Havant Borough Council’s planning officers, despite their clear right to uninterrupted vehicular access via the entrance on Solent Road which was approved for their sole use by HBC almost twenty years ago.

Their isolation from the planning system has not been helped by the troubling tendency of Hampshire County Council’s Highways planning officers to endorse so-called ‘robust’ transport assessments submitted with planning applications —even when the analysis submitted by transport consultants is plainly incomplete and skewed. This lack of audit rigour, first laid bare in the Amazon debacle, has been a key influence on the local planning authority’s handling of the current Portsmouth Water planning application from the outset.

The local authority’s ability to maintain focus on the proposal has also been hampered by the revolving door of leadership, with three chief executives and five interim heads of planning in post since 2019 when Portsmouth Water was first publicly visible pursuing a contentious plan to force its chosen access route through the Bosmere Medical Centre entrance.

Few in the town may object to the New Headquarters proposal, but there is near universal dismay at the choice of access, particularly when there were clear alternatives available from the start.

Regardless of whether you’re one of the Bosmere Medical Centre’s 20,000 patients, or a care home dependent on the late evening services of the Bosmere Pharmacy, if you are concerned about this proposal, please come to the Civic Plaza at 5:30pm on Thursday 26 June to listen to the debate and show your support. The public are always invited to Planning Committee meetings and this one is no exception to that rule.

Click anywhere in this green box to view the Planning Committee agenda detail.

On Thursday 26 June, we hope that some of the quieter members of Havant’s Planning Committee step up and engage with an important debate, cutting through the spin to prioritise the long-term interests of the borough’s residents.

For more detail, download the written statement submitted by HCS to the Planning Committee by clicking the thumbnail below. (Please accept our apologies if it looks a little cramped, but bear in mind that HBC Democratic Services dictates that written statements must be no more than two pages of text (with no images or links), using normal margins and Aerial 12 pitch font!).

A little background detail

Portsmouth Water’s new headquarters proposal may primarily reflect the strategic objectives of its owner, Ancala, just as Southern Water’s advanced effluent recycling project at Budds Farm aligns with the interests of its majority stakeholder, Macquarie. In both instances, it is likely that executive compensation is partially contingent on securing favourable outcomes from the local planning authority. The same two companies’ stake in the Havant Thicket Reservoir has also been stretching credulity in recent months.

How did we get here?

Portsmouth Water have been capitalising on their land bank for decades, with successive council chiefs and elected leaders seeming more focused on bowing to the demands of parliamentary leadership, rather than focussing solely on the needs of the borough. Many residents believe that without effective representation at Westminster since David Willetts took his seat in the Lords, the Havant community has been left without a voice, drifting aimlessly in a rudderless borough.

The current Labour-led ‘rainbow coalition’ appears unwilling to challenge its own party’s top-down housing targets and the self-destructive local government reorganisation agenda – taking the lead from their Conservative predecessors, whose fixation with the Solent Freeport fantasy left Dunsbury Park desperate for occupants while paving the way for the country’s largest Amazon delivery station to land awkwardly in the heart of Havant, marooned on the wrong side of the tracks.

Since the 2024 elections, the council has seen a surge in talent and energy – only to squander it on political theatre. Perhaps if more councillors broke ranks with their party whips and coalesced into a majority Havant Independent Alliance, there might be momentum behind meaningful change.

Are there any historical precedents for the Planning Committee to consider?

This particular planning application was one of those rarities, a planning application submitted to Havant Borough Council by Portsmouth Water which was turned down. We only discovered it while testing the council’s interesting online mapping service, see this earlier blog post from May.

This proposal from 2002 was for 45 houses and a medical centre in a rather familiar location. The planning applicant was Brockhampton Property Investments, one of Portsmouth Water’s many company identities. And thereby hangs a tail that we don’t have time to go into right now.

The reasons for refusal, over twenty years ago, included this one:

“The proposed development will result in additional vehicles using the Solent Road and Park Road South junction and the applicant has failed to adequately demonstrate that the capacity, safety and operation of this junction will not be materially affected by the development proposals.”

Clearly a planning application dating from a time before TRICS, when traffic surveys were done by real humans using the ‘Mk I eyeball’, a pencil and a pad of paper.

Remember!

Regardless of whether you’re one of the Bosmere Medical Centre’s 20,000 patients, or a care home dependent on the late evening services of the Bosmere Pharmacy, if you are concerned about this proposal, please come to the Civic Plaza at 5:30pm on Thursday 26 June to listen to the debate and show your support. The public are always invited to Planning Committee meetings and this one is no exception to that rule.

Click anywhere in this green box to view the Planning Committee agenda detail.