ADD Update: 3 February 2025: On 8 January, Bloor Homes launched a blatant attempt to circumvent Eastleigh’s Local Plan process with an application to build 245 homes on greenfield land at Mortimers Lane in Fair Oak. We wrote about this five days later, urging local residents to object formally to the application. The deadline to do so is this Friday, 7 February, so if you are yet to give your feedback to Eastleigh Borough Council (EBC), we would be extremely grateful if you could do so by emailing Eastleigh’s planning specialist Clare Martin at [email protected]. Every comment counts!
To help with your message to Clare Martin, we have included ADD’s draft submission below.
We would like to thank the hundreds of local residents who support ADD’s work and have recently submitted feedback to EBC’s Local Plan consultation, which closed on 29 January. Once we are through 7 February, and the specific Bloor Homes’ consultation (which is the most pressing issue at the moment), we will have a period of calm before the council comes back to the community with concrete proposals for its new Local Plan, expected in 2026.
As always, if you would like to contact us, or have comments for us, please email [email protected].
ADD’S DRAFT OBJECTION TO OUTLINE APPLICATION BY BLOOR HOMES AT MORTIMERS LANE, FAIR OAK – O/24/98619
STARTS
ADD is an umbrella group that had its roots in the engagement of local residents groups in opposition to the previous proposals for a Strategic Growth Option in the Bishopstoke and Fair Oak area which formed part of the local plan proposals published in 2015. We played a leading role in the objections to these proposals, which were rejected by the Planning Inspector at the Examination in Public in 2020.
ADD represents local parish councils, residents’ associations and amenity groups, and has been supported by CPRE and a number of national like-minded organisations. We are not a NIMBY organisation. We recognise the need for Eastleigh to plan to provide the right homes in the right places to meet the needs of local residents, and the pressures they will be under from the government’s housing targets set in December 2024.
We objected to previous proposals on Mortimers Lane and elsewhere in then-called Option B and Option C areas because they were not backed by evidence that they were in the right place, brought forward by a properly conducted plan-making process. Instead they were developer-led proposals, clearly driven by the logic of profit for developers and landowners.
The evidence put forward to justify them was shown to be flimsy and flawed at the Examination in Public in 2020, and alternatives were shown to have been inadequately explored.
One of the main reasons for the Planning Inspector’s rejection was the traffic impacts of development on Mortimers Lane. The Inspector identified that development in these areas, remote from public transport services, would be heavily car-dependent. Even with the proposed link road to the M3, the development on Mortimers Lane would have had an unacceptable impact on the rural lanes of the South Downs National Park.
Previous work by Eastleigh Borough Council (EBC), going back to 2011, identified the Mortimers lane area as remote from local services and facilities and that large-scale development would exacerbate existing traffic congestion in Fair Oak and Bishopstoke. For these reasons it was eliminated from consideration at the long-list stage in 2011.
As Bloor Homes will be only too well aware, EBC have only just received comments on their Issues and Options consultation for their new Local Plan, as a prelude to bringing forward evidence-based proposals for development, including for Strategic Development Options in 2026. We are confident that these proposals will take account of the large number of comments the council will have received on how ill-advised development on Mortimers Lane would be – given how remote it is from any public transport other than a very poor bus service, and how much traffic chaos it would cause in Fair Oak, Bishopstoke, Colden Common, Twyford and the rural Lanes of the National Park.
Bloor Homes’ decision to bring forward these proposals now is a blatant attempt to jump the gun on the evolution of an evidence-led plan, drawing on a multitude of options, and to drag EBC into the same unjustified process that caused their plan to be rejected in 2020. Even in the unlikely event that EBC were to favour and promote Option A (in which Bloor Homes’ proposal sits) at the reg 19 stage, it is likely that this site would be designated for other uses than 245 homes.
At the time of Bloor Homes’ self-styled three-week ‘consultation’ last summer, they say they received 182 comments. We were sent 59 of these – all objections – 57 of which cite respondents’ concerns over traffic chaos. We have not seen the other 123 but – unless Bloor homes can demonstrate otherwise – we contend that an overwhelming majority of the 183 responses will have expressed the same concerns.
Bloor Homes’ statement of community involvement concludes “all of the feedback received has been reviewed, considered and responded to by the applicant”. This is plainly not the case. No attempt has been made by Bloor Homes to address the concerns raised about traffic. This is understandable, as there is no way of effectively resolving them.
We should add that Bloor Homes’ statement of community involvement also includes a falsehood, stating: “We have reached out to…ADD with the offer of a meeting, the group has not responded to date.” This is not true.
They contacted us on 3rd September – and our reply on 23rd September read:
Thank you for your email inviting ADD to discuss your proposals with you.
We outlined in our consultation response the fundamental objections we see to the development of your proposed site on Mortimers Lane. In summary our objections relate to the lack of facilities within the local infrastructure to handle an additional 250 homes. Due to their isolated location these homes would be reliant on private transport, and traffic chaos would ensue in and around Fair Oak and neighbouring communities as a result.
These are objections that were also articulated by the 60 or so consultation responses that we have seen (and we are sure you will have received many others).
Neither anything you have published since the consultation, nor your invitation, make any attempt to explain how; or indeed whether, you will answer these objections.
We therefore feel that there is little value in a meeting or discussion with you at this time.
As we noted in our consultation response, if you were to decide to proceed towards a planning application in the teeth of overwhelming local objection we trust that you would be publishing all the consultation responses you have received, as part of any application.
In brief, the objections were too fundamental to make a meeting serve any purpose.
Bloor Homes clearly have no plans to publish local people’s objections to their proposals. However, we urge them to change their mind so that their application can be seen in the most transparent light possible.
ENDS
