horndeanmatters

The Lovedean Sub-station took delivery today of a new transformer which was manufactured in Europe and brought by road from Portsmouth dockyard.

Collett, a specialist heavy haulage firm, delivered the transformer to The National Grid on a 70m long heavy lift frame and supporting platforms. This complicated arrangement of trailers is able to steer independently of the front truck towing and the second truck pushing it with the 1000 ton gross load spread along the road by about 200 tyres.

Travelling up Day Lane after a period of rain was a bit too much for the trucks which lost traction on the slippery road surface and the load only got moving again with an unplanned tow from a Baldwins mobile crane and a JCB telehandler.

In all it took about 3 hours to travel the 500m from the Bird in Hand pub to the sub station

Photographs Nolan Bird, Guy Shepherd.

This coming weekend National Grid are moving a “Supergrid Transformer” to the Lovedean substation. This will be with a 70m long low loader which will be travelling up Lovedean Lane, Day Lane and Broadway Lane around 11:00am.

The delivery vehicle will be about 70m long so expect some very slow moving traffic while the engineers remove road signs and other obstacles on the way!

The transformer is replacing existing equipment (it is not part of the proposed battery storage or Aquind projects)

Photo below of a similar vehicle movement

The appearance of a planning notice on a lamp column results in inevitable concern about what is coming next…

In Horndean by The Precinct an Orange planning notice has been posted highlighting all of the industrial estate including the BT exchange and businesses running down to Universal Cars and Horndean Tyres.

This however is a good news story…

Under ‘Permitted Development’ rules you are allowed to carry out certain activities without planning permission. This includes some types of extension, garage and so on. It also allows owners of commercial premises to convert them to residential without permission.

The employment sites we have locally provide local jobs and while we want to use brownfield land for housing we don’t want to do this by allowing successful businesses to be shut down to cash in on a land value.

To counter this we have put an ‘Article 4’ notice on the land that stops this happening without planning permission. There is nothing to stop the freeholder apply but while the land is designated as an employment site in the local plan it’ll be a big challenge. Hopefully these businesses will be protected and be with us for some time to come!

Article 4 information

Sally and the team have been holding monthly litter picks in Horndean and Clanfield for over two years now and have collected well in excess of a thousand bags of rubbish including fast food wrappers, bottles and occasionally some really weird stuff…

The next litter Pick is the 9th September and the team meet at the far end of the car park at Morrison’s Horndean at 9:30am.

All are welcome to join in for 90 minutes to help make a difference.

Thank you Sally and the team for keeping at it!

At the end of last week travellers pitched up on the Horndean Parish Council owned playing fields on Five Heads Road. 6 caravans and a number of commercial vehicles gained entry to the fields used by Horndean Football Club, dog walkers and local children.

Horndean Parish Council are in the process of having them removed.

Travellers are often associated with home improvements such as driveways, patios and roofing so please be cautious about visitors selling their services at the door. Visit the Hampshire County Council Trading Standards Website for further advice.

On The night of Thursday 26th July our local Clanfield Co-operative was targeted by thieves, this time in a smash and grab raid by forklift. The raid which was shortly before 4:00am on the Friday morning was carried out using a Manitou forklift which was then set fire in the car park to destroy any evidence. Fire fighters from Cosham were called out to put the blaze out and had made it safe by 04:30am. The thieves targeted the cash point which was stolen in the attack. These typically contain £50,000 in cash but are also armed with anti-tamper devices which can render the money unusable if they are activated.

A white vehicle was seen speeding off after the raid and anyone with any information should call police on 101 quoting 44180283769.

The store is now open again with a temporary hoarding around the damaged part of the building and hopefully we can support the store and staff by carrying on using it.

All 12 City, District and Borough Councils in the South of Hampshire along with the County Council meet regularly to look at housing needs, employment, investment, infrastructure and other local issues. This is an organisation called PUSH (Partnership for Urban South Hampshire) and includes Southampton, Portsmouth, Isle of Wight, Eastleigh, Fareham, Gosport, Havant and the southern parts of New Forest, Test Valley, Winchester, East Hants and Hampshire County Council.

PUSH region Map

In this region we need to build 100,000 new homes between now and 2034 to meet our own needs (growing population, ageing population, more homes with single people living in them etc). This is a tough enough challenge to put these into the right places with the right facilities. When this means sacrificing green fields then it is a case of “The Least Worst Place” by selecting low grade green farm land and areas that have the least impact on the community. It is important that we achieve this though to ensure we can provide sufficient housing and make provision for rented and shared ownership accommodation too.

At the last PUSH meeting there was a presentation by CPRE (Campaign for the Protection of Rural England) which put forward a proposal to establish a green belt across the South of England. Sounds like a great idea. Anything to protect high quality open space from being built on is important but how would this affect us?

At this point it gets very territorial between the local authorities. All of us are open to housing in the right places, and can live with it in the least worse place, but it would be great if we could all take our own fair share…

Portsmouth for example is land locked and fully built up and can not meet its own housing needs (although it could choose to allow tall buildings to be built like Southampton). Gosport struggles with viable development and access down the A32 is already slow and improving access is costly. Developers like to focus on communities with greater house prices so they get a better return. Other local authorities simply don’t achieve their own planned figures.

So what then would the impact of a green belt be?

Realistically there would be none in East Hants as we have few credible areas in Clanfield, Horndean and Rowlands Castle to put forward. For Districts like Fareham, Gosport, Eastleigh and others wholly in PUSH it would be a major score to establish these zones. Immensely popular. A big vote winner even.

The problem for us is that we already have one large zone to the north of us where development is pretty much impossible. The SNDP (South Downs National Park Authority) covers over 50% of East Hants land area and takes only 10% of the housing. Creating a Green Belt to the south of us cutting across all of the other Cities and Districts will only add to the pressure on the “Duty To Cooperate” between adjacent local authorities to take on another authorities un-met need.

For me the only proposal that we should accept allowing our neighbouring authorities to designate ‘Green Belts’ is if they are also in a position to accommodate their own housing needs inside their own boundaries in areas outside of the belt. As the EHDC PUSH and Solent LEP representative this is the position I will be taking – so apologies if you hear me not speaking positively about a Green Belt, but this is the reason why…