A CAMPAIGN to save threatened countryside at a military base is gaining support.

Littleton and Harestock Parish Council is seeking to protect open space at Sir John Moore Barracks which local politicians fear is earmarked for housing.

The Ministry of Defence is due to vacate the barracks by 2024, the home of the Army Training Regiment. It is drawing up plans with ideas including housing, a business park, community facilities and park and ride.

The parish council wants to save 25 hectares as a nature reserve that has never been intensively farmed, although used for training recruits.

In a letter to the Chronicle Conservative councillors Pat Cunningham, Caroline Horrill and Stephen Godfrey said: “Not content with developing the inner 40 hectares of brownfield land, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) intends to build up to 1,200 dwellings across the entire estate, on the false grounds that the ancient and untouched biodiverse rich spaces are “technically” previously developed brownfield land as well!

“This is the 25 hectares of open unspoilt and untouched biodiverse rich land outside the boundary security fence in the northern part of the barracks.”

Sparsholt College is backing the nature reserve. Julie Milburn, principal, told the council: “At Sparsholt College we have a number of FE and HE courses concerned with management of ecology and the environment. Having access to sites of scientific and ecological interest is important to the curriculum. If we were able to access a nature reserve locally, this will be of direct use to our staff and students for practical wildlife surveying and monitoring work and research studies for our degree course students.”

An MoD spokesperson said: “The MoD is committed to supporting biodiversity at all our sites, and is working with Winchester City Council, Hampshire County Council and Natural England to ensure the proposals for Sir John Moore Barracks deliver enhancements to biodiversity and ecology.”

It has been consulting with local people including the parish council and are “reviewing the alternative proposals being put forward for the northern part of the site that to date have been extensively cultivated for military training purposes.”

Although the proposed reserve has been used for training it has never been intensively farmed and has been owned by the MoD since at least World War Two. It has been managed by the military to conserve its ecological interest.

Further public consultation is due this year with a planning application expected in the summer of 2022.