New Housing – where?
Map showing available development sites will open in anew tab
We expect that the new Test Valley Borough Local Plan (being prepared now) will ‘allocate’ a number of new houses to our Parish and will extend the current Settlement Boundary to accommodate them. At the moment we are working on a likely need to accommodate another 40 houses.
Landowners have put forward several sites around the village as being available for development for housing or other uses. These are shown on the TVBC Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability (SHELAA) list and shown on the map.
Our consultants, Bluestone Planning, have looked at these sites and assessed their suitability for housing using established criteria. They have identified sites 42 and 310 as the preferred sites.
More reading : New Housing – where?
Test Valley Borough Council are working on a new Local Plan that will include a target for the number of new houses in the borough by 2040 and will identify where they will be. We anticipate that the Local Plan will include an ‘allocation’ of new houses to rural parishes like ours. At this stage we are working on this allocation being about 10% of our existing housing – about 40.
There is some space on ‘infill’ and ‘garden’ plots for perhaps 5-6 (at most 10) more houses within the existing settlement boundary, but accommodating another 30-35 houses means that additional land* will have to be incorporated into the boundary.
*Part of the Michelmersh Brickworks site is within the settlement boundary and therefore could be developed for housing when the site closes, although we are not certain when this will happen.
We want to be in a position to be able to direct TVBC, when preparing the Local Plan, towards specific ‘new’ sites that our community believes are most suitable.
The map shows the 18 sites that have been put forward to Test Valley BC by landowners as being potentially available for housing or other development. TVBC has incorporated these into their Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment (SHELAA) which will inform future planning processes including the Local Plan.
Other sites may be put forward, but at this stage we are seeking your views on the sites on the current ‘SHELAA’ list. At this stage we are focussing on HOUSING – some sites may be more suitable for commercial or ‘mixed’ uses. So bearing in mind that new development will happen in the Parish, which sites would you prefer were developed for housing?
Our consultants, Bluestone Planning, have carried out a comparative assessment of the SHELAA sites using appropriate criteria. These assessments have links from the map.
Their preliminary conclusion is that Sites 42 and 310, both accessed directly from Stockbridge Road, are the most suitable and together can accommodate about 30
houses. It would not be necessary to develop the whole of site 42: a landscape/wildlife ‘buffer’ between new houses and the ‘Choice Plants’ site can be included – it is anticipated that this site will probably be developed for commercial uses.
The new housing should almost certainly include a number of ‘affordable’ smaller houses, probably of the ‘shared ownership’ type: the need for these was highlighted by the Community Questionnaire responses and by the initial findings of a Housing Needs
Assessment (HNA) which is in progress.