Why is it important for Hart residents to oppose the Rushmoor Local Plan?

Posted on July 8, 2015July 21, 2015

Example of Urban Sprawl

We have received some feedback questioning why Hart District residents should contribute to Rushmoor Borough Council’s consultation on its Draft Local Plan.

The main reasons are:

Help fend off the extra 1,600 houses Rushmoor wants Hart to build for them and avoid urban sprawl like that shown above.
Challenge the Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) that has led to the combined Hart, Surrey Heath and Rushmoor housing requirement being set so high. If we are successful in this, then Surrey Heath and Rushmoor don’t need to foist houses on Hart and the whole need for a new town at Winchfield or anywhere else goes away
Push for more of the housing requirement to be built on the 196 hectares of surplus brownfield employment land.
Point out the fundamental flaw of the combined £158m infrastructure funding deficit across Rushmoor and Hart (and £1.9bn funding deficit across Hampshire) that will mean we will get all of the houses but none of the infrastructure spending we need to build the healthcare facilities, expand rail capacity, fix broken roads and build the schools we need.

Please download the pre-prepared feedback forms, fill in your details and send off to [email protected]. The consultation closes on 20 July 2015.

Rushmoor Local Plan Response Form

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Additional Response to Rushmoor Local Plan

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link link

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!266 Downloads

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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!266 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.

Please help Hart fend off an extra 1,600 houses from Rushmoor

Posted on June 17, 2015August 30, 2015

Is this what we want Hart to turn into?

Rushmoor Borough Council has published a draft Local Plan where it proposes to build only 8,200 of its assessed need of 9,822 houses over the plan period. It is clear that Rushmoor is seeking to offload the remaining 1,622 houses on to Hart District.

We need to oppose this move and We Heart Heart have produced some materials to help you do this easily. Our voice will have greater weight if we can get more Hart residents to comment on Rushmoor’s plan than Rushmoor residents. 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!266 Downloads

A summary of the arguments we are putting forwards is outlined below.

Slippery slope to taking more housing than the other districts

The proposal to take an additional 1,622 houses from Rushmoor puts us on the slippery slope to accepting a further 1,400 houses from Surrey Heath such that Hart District ends up having to build the most houses in the Housing Market Area.

	Hart District	Surrey Heath Borough	Rushmoor Borough	Total Housing Market Area
Original SHMA	7,534	7,057	9,822	24,413
Proposed Transfers	3,022	(1,400)	(1,622)	0
New Total	10,556	5,657	8,200	24,413

This will impact all of our districts including Blackwater and Hawley; Bramshill; Church Crookham; Crondall; Crookham Village; Dogmersfield; Elvetham Heath; Eversley; Ewshot; Fleet; Greywell; Hartley Wintney; Heckfield; Hook; Mattingley; North Warnborough; Odiham; Rotherwick; South Warnborough; Winchfield; and Yateley adding additional pressure to an already difficult situation and make it more likely we have to accept both a new town and urban extensions on our beautiful green fields and countryside.

Hart and the rest of Housing Market Area are being asked to build too many houses

The whole Housing Market Area (HMA) should reduce the assessed need by 7,800 units which would reduce the pressure on Hart directly and remove the need for Surrey Heath and Rushmoor to ask us to build >3,000 houses for them. This is discussed in more detail here.

Rushmoor isn’t making best use of its brownfield sites

This is discussed in more detail here and here. As can be seen, if Rushmoor gets more creative with Wellesley and plans to build on the sites it has already identified, there is potential capacity for over 30,000 dwellings, more than three times its (overblown) assessed need. It surely cannot be too much to expect them to find the 1,600 houses they say they can’t build out of this wealth of opportunity. Rushmoor Borough Council should re-visit its planned densities and seek to meet all of its assessed need within in its own boundaries. It could then make some sites available for neighbouring rural districts in line with a recent survey of Hampshire residents seeking to protect rural areas. Neighbouring districts could be approached to provide SANG capacity if required. Rushmoor should also take a closer look at all the vacant sites in the district and seek to convert them to residential use.

Rushmoor’s Employment Land Review is overblown and seeks to protect more employment land than is necessary.

This is discussed here. It is also clear that past forecasts got it wrong as evidenced by the large number of vacant office blocks and empty shops across Hart District. If the ELR was reduced to more sensible levels they could free up more land for housing.

Indeed, even if you accept the overblown employment forecasts, there will be a surplus of nearly 600K sq m of employment space at the end of the plan period, covering around 195 Ha. Yet Rushmoor seeking to protect 96 Ha of land whilst asking Hart to build 1,600 houses on green fields.

Rushmoor’s infrastructure plans are not credible

We posted here that Hampshire as a whole has a £1.9bn infrastructure funding deficit, with Rushmoor’s share of that being £80m. Rushmoor makes no mention of this deficit in its draft Local Plan. Hart’s own numbers show an infrastructure deficit of £78m. All of these numbers are probably an under-statement given they were all produced before the scale of development now proposed was known. This is in contravention of NPPF para 177 that says there must be a “reasonable prospect” of delivering the required infrastructure alongside housing:

“It is equally important to ensure that there is a reasonable prospect that planned infrastructure is deliverable in a timely fashion. To facilitate this, it is important that local planning authorities understand district-wide development costs at the time Local Plans are drawn up. For this reason, infrastructure and development policies should be planned at the same time, in the Local Plan”

Finally, they don’t even attempt to quantify the extra infrastructure Hart would need to build the extra 1,600 houses nor do they make any offer to fund any of that extra cost.

Rushmoor not planning to meet the needs of the ageing population

Figure 10.15 of the SHMA sets out the need for specialist housing and registered care places for the HMA and Rushmoor. This states Rushmoor must build 710 sheltered and extra care units as well as provide an extra 600 registered care places. Their draft Local Plan makes no mention of the extra registered care places and sets no target for the sheltered and extra care units. This is in contravention of NPPF para 50 which states:

“local planning authorities should…plan for a mix of housing based on current and future demographic trends, market trends and the needs of different groups in the community (such as, but not limited to, families with children, older people, people with disabilities, service families and people wishing to build their own homes)”

Therefore the Rushmoor draft Local Plan runs the risk of being found unsound and should be revised.

In conclusion, the Rushmoor draft Local Plan contains many serious flaws and needs to be revised.

Link

Rushmoor can meet all of its housing needs (and more) from Wellesley alone

Posted on June 16, 2015December 22, 2015

Wellesley – Aldershot Urban Extension – Planning Densities

The centrepiece of Rushmoor’s development strategy in the draft Local Plan is the Wellesley development (formerly known as the Aldershot Urban Extension).

This is a 143 hectare development where they are planning to build 3,850 new houses. This amounts to a pitiful density of only 26.9 dwellings per hectare (dph) across the whole area, even lower than Hart’s planning assumption of 30dph. Across the plots digitised by Gareth Price, the density rises to 35.5dph whcih is still very low for an urban area.

If Rushmoor were to alter the plans for Wellesley to an easily achievable 68.7dph, they could meet the entire assessed housing need of 9,822 up to 2032 without even touching the other sites in their SHLAA leaving additional capacity for future years or for neighbouring districts.

Modern planning techniques as outlined by Gareth Price, suggests that thriving, sustainable communities can be created in urban areas with planning densities in the range of 150-250dph. Moving to around 152dph would give them capacity at Wellesley for over 21,500 units, giving sufficient capacity for Rushmoor for decades to come.

This analysis will form part of our response to Rushmoor’s draft Local Plan.

Hart District and Rushmoor can meet their housing needs from brownfield sites for 50 years or more

Posted on June 14, 2015December 22, 2015

Hartland Park (Pyestock) near Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire, warehouse development not started

Brownfield site: Hartland Park (Pyestock) near Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire

A new paper by young architecture graduate, Gareth Price shows that Hart District and Rushmoor Borough could build 49,000 homes on brownfield sites by shedding the old models of the past and adopting a more modern approach of building higher density developments in existing urban areas. This would avoid urban sprawl and protect our green fields to act as amenity space for the enjoyment of all.

Gareth’s document goes through many of the brownfield sites in both Hart and Rushmoor and applies modern techniques to demonstrate how more can be made of existing land to build more affordable homes on brownfield sites in urban areas to meet the needs of younger people who are struggling to get on the housing ladder and the elderly who will more, smaller more manageable homes closer existing amenities and infrastructure.

The paper illustrates also illustrates where these techniques have been applied in London and on the continent to create vibrant, cohesive communities.

This paper is exactly the sort of thing that We Heart Hart had in mind when we put forward our 5-point plan for improving Hart’s approach to the Local Plan where we called for a competition to be held amongst architects to illustrate the art of the possible on our brownfield sites and provide a vision to guide the regeneration of our urban town centres as an alternative to endless urban sprawl across our green fields.

No doubt there will be some who will disagree with the level of development intensity Gareth proposes for some areas in Hart, where he concludes we could build 25,000 homes on them. However, it is clear that the capacity of the brownfield sites he has studied is very much greater than the 700 dwellings Hart has said we could deliver over the period up to 2032. Indeed, according to our brownfield monitor the capacity is already up to 2,360 units in just 6 months. We must challenge Rushmoor to make more of their brownfield sites.

The paper can be downloaded below:

A sustainable approach to building on brownfield sites in Hart District and Rushmoor

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Link

Hart Council gives go ahead for two office conversions

Posted on June 6, 2015June 15, 2015

Vacant brownfield Block at Ancells Farm, Fleet, Hart District, Hampshire

Vacant Office at Ancells Farm, Fleet, Hampshire

Further to our posts about the additional brownfield capacity in Hart District, the council have given the go ahead for two office conversions.

The first is at Pioneer House on Ancells Farm, Fleet and the second is at Providence House, Bartley Wood, Hook.

The Ancell’s Farm, Fleet development is for 33 units and the Bartley Wood, Hook development is for 113 apartments.

Overall, this look to be a welcome development because it relieves pressure on green field development in the district. However, we would prefer it, if these developments were carried out as part of a master plan to convert certain areas to residential use from office use as opposed to piecemeal development along with necessary infrastructure.

These developments were already counted in our brownfield tracker.

We need to find more of these developments so we can avoid building a new town in Hart and protect our valuable green fields.

Hart Council Local Plan behind Schedule

Posted on June 4, 2015July 11, 2015

Hart District Local Plan Project Behind Schedule

Hart Council is falling behind its own schedule for the delivery of the Local Plan. This is exposing the district to increasing pressures from developers who have more latitude to push through inappropriate development when there is no Local Plan in place. This does not engender a great deal of confidence that the rest of the project will proceed to schedule.

According to their own schedule they are apparently slipping in these areas:

The Employment Land Review is not complete – they have consulted, but not published an updated document. It is based on the same pie in the sky job forecasts as the SHMA.
The Retail and Main Town uses should have been finished in March. There is no document about this subject beyond 2012 on Hart’s website.
The landscape capacity assessment should have been completed in April, but again nothing published on their website.
Settlement hierarchy paper should have been completed in May.
A shortlist of strategic sites for Phase 2 testing should have been complete in April, but it is my understanding that this decision has yet to be taken.
The Vision should have been completed in May, again nothing published.

After receiving an unsatisfactory response to a question raised at Hart Council back in April, we raised a Freedom of Information request to receive a copy of the project they are following to deliver the Local Plan. The document we received can be found here. It is clear they are suffering from “unwarranted optimism”.

We Heart Hart Petition breaks 2,000 barrier

Posted on June 2, 2015August 19, 2015

We Heart Hart Campaign Logo

The We Heart Hart petition is now really taking off, breaking through the 2,000 barrier over the weekend. This is approaching four times the number of valid responses to Hart Council’s consultation that took place in Autumn 2014 and more than 9 times the number of people (220) of said they favoured a new settlement.

It seems that the people of Hart are backing our 5-point plan for change and waking up to the reality that the Council’s plans will:

Force Hart to build an extra 3,100 houses for Rushmoor and Surrey Heath

Turn the northern part of Hart will turn into a single urban sprawl when there is an alternative of building higher density in urban areas to help rejuvenate our high streets

Lead to more congestion and traffic all over the district, particularly in Fleet and Church Crookham

Ignore many brownfield sites untouched all over the district where we could build housing

Create intolerable pressure on our local services such as doctors, schools, roads, sewage, electricity and railways because their infrastructure plans are under-funded by at least £78m

Destroy our environment and the very nature of Hart’s unique appeal – the reason we all love living here.

If you would like to join our campaign, please sign and share our petition:

Go to Petition

Surely it is now time for Hart Council to think again, act on the legal opinion describing their position as “hopeless”, focus on brownfield first and listen to the people.