ADD UPDATE, 22 April 2019: Ahead of the local elections on Thursday 2 May, Action against Destructive Development (ADD) has invited each candidate standing for Eastleigh Borough Council (EBC), and each candidate standing for Winchester City Council, to supply us with up to 350 words on their views on EBC’s draft Local Plan and its progress. The same invitation was extended to candidates in the parish/town council elections in our area.
As you will be aware, EBC voted to include ‘options B and C’ in its Local Plan, namely proposals for around 5,500 houses and a major new road north of Bishopstoke, Fair Oak and Allbrook and south of Colden Common, Owslebury and Upham, significantly affecting Boyatt Wood, Chandler’s Ford, Hiltingbury, Otterbourne, Brambridge, Highbridge, Twyford and Bishop’s Waltham. This draft Plan will be examined by an independent planning inspector later this year.
As part of our virtual hustings, Phillip Parkinson-Shanley, Conservative candidate for Bishopstoke on Eastleigh Borough Council sent us the following message (he didn’t want to send us a photo of himself so we chose the caption above):
“Housing will happen. Those orders came from above and so it will happen. We must therefore have a local plan, however that plan must be absolutely water tight, it must be in the best interests of the majority of people, NOT just those with financial interests.
It is vital that we have councillors who are not against development, but are instead against exploitative or unsupported development. If housing must be built the infrastructure must accompany it BEFORE a single house is built, we must not allow builders to clog up our roads, we must not allow these new houses to put a burden on already busy schools or doctors surgeries, we must therefore DEMAND of those developers that they build us the services we will need BEFORE those houses may be built. We must work with them to ensure that what we get is what we need, not what the developers want to quickly throw together for a quick buck.
Options B and C could (if correctly moderated and correctly overseen) be of huge benefit economically. It is important that people do not vote for those who they believe will stop the building. They will not. They cannot. Building will happen. We must be certain to pick the councillors who will do that well.
My chances of winning this election are slim, there are many who will not vote for the Conservatives out of anger over what we are perceived to have done (or rather not done) nationally; that anger is not necessarily unwarranted, many conservatives share it in fact. However, we must not let the national effect the local; Theresa May will not help with your bins or local traffic but the local Conservatives will. We are not single issue candidates, we are not simply more cogs in a machine designed to give [EBC Leader] Keith House what he wants, we are a varied group of people all of whom want what is best for our neighbours and our local areas.
On 2 May, vote for honest, simple, local, politics.”
Phillip Parkinson-Shanley, Conservative candidate for Bishopstoke on Eastleigh Borough Council
