East Hants District Council held a 2 day public housing consultation at Merchistoun Hall (21st, 22nd March 2014) at the request of the 5 Horndean District Councillors to seek the communities view on where to build and what community facilities we should get with the housing we are required to take.
The consultation was very well attended with the average attendance over the 8 hour period at 30 to 40 visitors at any one time. In all we estimate 800 people came and took part. Displays included information on the Social, Economic, and Environmental aspects of Horndean including designated flood zones and heritage information. For those who just wanted to find out more about Horndean it was a very informative consultation, and thank you to East Hants for organising this.
The key area of interest was for people place a mark on a map of the parish to show where they felt housing should go, (or perhaps the least worst place for it to go). The overwhelming feedback is that this should be directed to the South of the parish adjacent to Junction 2 of the A3M on Hazleton and Pyle Farms. The opinions expressed were that it was the most sustainable location based on the traffic that would otherwise be added to the village, the land had the lowest landscape value, and an aspiration that it was large enough to take all of Horndean’s housing needs. (Photograph is part way through the Day 1 consultation)
Community facilities were also discussed and the most important areas were ‘Infrastructure’ and ensuring the Schools, Doctors, Libraries, Roads etc keep up with the growing need. The importance of the open public space was also very high and as most of us have deliberately decided to move into a semi rural area this should be no surprise. (Photo below from Day 1)
And finally, the consultation map towards the end of Day 1 showing where people thought we should build below:
Keep watching this website to see the full results in numbers as soon as they come in, and to find out how we hope this consultation will be used to steer housing into the right places.
