Owens Farm saved as Hop Garden Road Appeal dismissed

Posted on July 7, 2015July 7, 2015

Owens Farm Hop Garden Road Hook

We found out today that the Hop Garden Road appeal we attended was dismissed, so the land at Owens Farm, Hook has been protected from development.

This is great news, although it has to be said that it isn’t at all clear whether the evidence we submitted swayed matters one way or the other.

However, it was upheld that the council does have a current five year land supply. Our evidence, on this occasion was in support of the council, indicating that there was in fact a land supply far in excess of five years because the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) was too high and the housing supply didn’t include the brownfield redevelopment of employment sites recently started.

Charles Church Homes argued that the Housing Market Assessment was under-cooked and Hart should be building far more houses, in particular, the 1,600 houses from Rushmoor.

So, we should celebrate a small victory.

Rushmoor seeking to protect 96 hectares of brownfield sites but asking Hart to concrete over green fields

Posted on July 3, 2015August 20, 2015

Empty Offices at Farnborough Aerospace Business Park, Rushmoor Borough, Hampshire.

Rushmoor have released more details about their Land Assessment (SHLAA) that reveal they are seeking to protect over 96 hectares of brownfield sites for employment use even though there is a massive glut of employment space across Hart, Rushmoor, Surrey Heath and surrounding districts.

Rushmoor Protected Employment Sites

If even half of this was used for housing at 100 dwelling per hectare, it would yield 4,800 houses for people in Rushmoor and would mean that Rushmoor could meet its own housing need and even take some of Hart and Surrey Heath’s allocation.

If you would like to ask Rushmoor to revise their Local Plan and make better use of the brownfield sites they have, then please follow the simple process below:

Download the Local Plan response form from the link below.
On page 3, fill in your name and contact details and type your name and date in the boxes at the bottom of the page.
Review the comments made and feel free to add, amend or delete as you see fit.
Save the document, attach it to an email and send to [email protected]
Share a link to this page to all your friends and family as well as any sports clubs or community groups you belong to via word of mouth, email, Facebook and Twitter and ask them to put in a response and share this page again.
If you have not already done so, please sign and share our petition too

Rushmoor Local Plan Response Form

Download Now!267 Downloads

Download Now!

Massive surplus of brownfield employment land but Rushmoor wants Hart to concrete over green fields

Posted on July 2, 2015July 3, 2015

Empty Offices at Farnborough, Rushmoor Borough, Hampshire.

The Employment Land Review (ELR) shows there is a massive surplus of around 600K sq m employment space occupying around 195 Ha of land across the combined area of Hart District, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor Boroughs. Yet, Rushmoor is seeking to protect 96 hectares of this land whilst at the same time trying to force Hart to build 1,600 houses for them on our beautiful green fields.

	Employment Space (sq m)
Overall Requirement to 2032 (a)	266,368
Current vacant space (b)	527,840
Sites with planning permission (c)	338,187
Surplus in 2032 (b+c-a)	599,659

If you would like to ask Rushmoor to revise its draft local plan, please download our pre-prepared response form and send it to [email protected].

Rushmoor Local Plan Response Form

Download Now!267 Downloads

The analysis to support the conclusion is shown below. We posted earlier that the ELR is based on the same flawed jobs forecasts as the housing market assessment that predict a near doubling of the job creation rate we achieved in the period 1998-2012. However, even if you accept these flawed forecasts and the unnecessary increase in housing it will lead to, the requirement for employment land in the combined economic area is 266K sq m using Rushmoor’s preferred Scenario 3.

Employment Land Requirements for Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor

However, as of December 2014, over 527K sq m of employment floorspace was lying vacant.

Vacant Employment Space in Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor

Moreover, there is a glut of employment space all across neighbouring districts with very high levels of vacant office space (note that there are also high vacancy rates on industrial land):

Office vacancy rates in neighbouring districts

In addition to the vacant units shown above, there is currently 388K sq m of floorspace on 110 Ha of land that currently has planning permission but is not yet being built:

Unimplemented planning permission in Hart Surrey Heath and Rushmoor

Drawing this together, there is a need for 266,000 sq m of space to meet the inflated employment forecasts, there’s currently 527,000 sq m lying vacant, with a further 338,000 sq m with planning permission, but not yet built. This would leave a surplus of nearly 600,000 sq m of employment space that might occupy around 195 Ha of land, using the same ratio of employment space to land use as the existing planning permissions.

It is clearly ridiculous for all of this land to be protected when even if say 100 Ha is made available, at 100 dwellings per hectare there could be room for 10,000 dwellings, a very large proportion of the overall 24,413 houses that have been allocated to Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor.