SIR: Many Winchester residents will have had the January/February edition of the Winchester Conservatives newsletter In Touch through their letterboxes last week. The newsletter’s front-page article “53,000 more houses for Winchester?” has caused some confusion in the district, particularly the implication that a number of large greenfield developments, including the 8,300 home new town proposed at Micheldever, would need to be built, and “our rural landscape would be swallowed up forever.”
SEE ALSO: Winchester councillors approved SHELAA for district
The 53,000 house figure in the newsletter refers to a wishlist of sites, known as the SHELAA, submitted to the city council in 2021 by developers and landowners. Councils across the country, whatever their political make up, are required by national policy to publish these lists annually as part of their work on their Local Plans – the Conservatives published their own version in 2018 when they controlled the city council. The number of new houses submitted by developers and landowners then was 41,000.
Winchester district will not need to build anything like 53,000 new houses. The actual figure required by 2039 is 14,000, but as 11,300 of these are already in the pipeline, the city council in fact has to find sites in its new Local Plan for 2,700 new homes.
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After a public consultation held last year on where these homes should be built showed unequivocally that Winchester residents did not support a large new greenfield development in the district, the city council decided last September to take forward a development strategy for the new Local Plan that rejects new settlements. We shall be working to ensure that they stand by this decision, so that the proposed new town at Micheldever does not become part of the new Local Plan.
Tessa Robertson,
Chair,
The Dever Society,
Micheldever
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