Hampshire Chronicle and Basingstoke Gazette on our concerns over the plans for 3,000 houses on Popham airfield

The Hampshire Chronicle (front page and editorial) and the Basingstoke Gazette have both featured our concerns over Basingstoke council’s plans for a 3,000 home ‘garden village’ on Popham Airfield.

The Hampshire Chronicle editorial says:

“There were a lot of people in the early 1990s who gave little chance to the Dever Society when it formed to fight plans for the new town centred on Micheldever Station.

“Well a lot of people were wrong. The Dever Society has prevailed. Not through the power of Nimbyism but because the plan for a new town slap bang in the middle of unspoiled Hampshire downland was a bad one. It was a bad plan in the early 1990s and it remains a bad one in the mid-2020s.

“But now a new threat emerges. Popham Garden Village is proposed for the airfield next to the A303 and very close to Micheldever Station. This is a huge scheme of 3,000 houses, which is not as big as Micheldever New Town, but big enough to undermine one of the main arguments that the Dever Society campaigners have put forward, that this part of central Hampshire is unspoilt.

“It would appear that the Basingstoke planners have thought they can tick off a big chunk of their required housing by plonking it on the edge of their district, almost where no one will notice. But it is being noticed and will be resisted.”

Click here to read the Hampshire Chronicle article and here to read the article in the Basingstoke Gazette.