EV52 - Draft Infrastructure Delivery Plan

Comment

"The local plan has never been put out to consultation as PUSH had promised to do so right from the start and as such the whole plan has been flawed from as early as 2014. Cranleigh Road was objected to by virtually every member of the public and every councillor on the very obvious grounds of lack of infrastructure. If one transposes the road names depending on location, e.g A27 for A32 or Brook Lane, school names - Park Gate for Wicor, surgery names - Lockswood Surgery for Westlands and any other service that you care to think of, then exactly the same objections apply to ALL of the development proposals listed in the SHLAA. As far as transport is concerned, not only are the roads inadequate but there is not enough space to allow the infrastructure necessary to cope with this level of development. 450 homes at the end of Newgate Lane South exiting onto the already highly dangerous, polluted and overcrowded A32 to Quay Street roundabout already ranked in the top 10 of the most dangerous roads in the country and subject to action by Central Government for illegal pollution levels. Every day on the Romanse traffic site the A27 and A32 appear with the phrase ""Usual delay westbound on Eastern Way from Delme Rbt to Quay St Rbt then southbound on Gosport Rd to Salterns Ln."" and how many times have we heard the phrase that ""there is no chance of any form of improvement to this stretch of road"". The Stubbington by-pass may help relieve the congestion but will only move the queue from Peel Common to the Titchfield Gyratory and thence to the M27 jnc. 9. Along with the 400 houses alluded to in HA3, that should bring the road to a standstill on a fairly regular basis. From the beginning of 2016 there have been 55 major incidents on the A27, 178 on the local section of the M3 (from Winchester) and 278 on the M27. Adding yet more traffic to these already overcrowded roads is going to prove expensive and even more dangerous. We already know that there will be no additional health services other than an improved car park - possibly - for the 3,500 additional houses in North Whiteley, and that existing surgeries are going to have to cope with the 6,000 at Welborne - not part of this particular plan but it should be taken into consideration as they will affect the whole Borough. Fareham and Gosport CCG raised the following objection to Planning Application P/15/1279/OA: ""Capacity in primary care provision in the Stubbington and Lee on the Solent areas is already much stretched. The wider area has high numbers of GP vacancies, and the availability of GPs coming into general practice to fill these vacancies is low. The existing surgery at Stubbington already has a high ratio of GPs (per whole time equivalent) to patients, with the practice averaging more than 400 patients per GP over the average. In addition to the high numbers of patients per GP the local practices have high consultation rates per patient, which further impacts on GP time and overall practice capacity. Further signi?cant housing development in the area at this time would exacerbate this already signi?cant pressure. The inclusion of an 80 bedded care home in this application would require additional healthcare support for this community and subsequently create greater pressures on the local practice who would be required to provide home visits to this facility."". Whilst this is now a few years old and relates to a development that the Council will, allegedly, try and defend although how successfully remains to be seen. Provision is supposedly being made for so-called Health and Wellbeing Hubs, whatever they may be, and an emergency appointment system at an inaccessible location is under trial, the underlying situation has most certainly not improved and in fact, is almost certainly worse according to open meetings held by the CCG. The argument applies equally to all areas of Fareham not just to the Stubbington and Lee-on-the-Solent area. All schools in the Borough are over-subscribed and as the majority of the accepted sites are relatively small there will be no substantial additional funding for improvement. It is totally unacceptable for this Council to state that health provision MUST be supplied by the CCG and education MUST be supplied by HCC. By proceeding with these developments the Council is exacerbating the situation and must take it's own share of responsibility for the problems that will be caused by this plan. According to document dfb01-Statement of Community Involvement para 2.2 states that: ""Our vision is for “a community that is actively and effectively involved in the planning process and a Local Development Framework that has been created with the extensive involvement of the local community”. Everyone in the community will be given opportunities to get involved and encouraged to participate throughout the process from an early stage."" There was NO consultation or involvement with the community when PUSH first published the Strategic Housing Market Assessment which could have been described as ""at an early stage"". That was nearly four years ago and only now are we being allowed to comment on the effect of that and subsequent assessments and to be honest, with very little action that can now be taken as it would seem that the quantity of new housing has been decided for us. According to Dr Alasdair Rae from the Urban Studies and Planning Department at the University of Sheffield, the Corine Land Cover inventory and Ordnance Survey, Fareham is now amongst the most densely developed urban areas in the country with 38% of its land area being built on against a national average of just 6%, even Southampton and Portsmouth have only twice the developed ratio and they are both major cities, whilst Winchester only has 4% of it's area covered by buildings. Because of the un-developable areas both north and south of the Borough, expansion (other than Welborne) is impossible and it is my belief that we have already reached the limit of development. Representation needs to be made to Central Government to ease the pressure of development in this area and to PUSH to amend their figures which in my opinion were based on falacious assumptions that deserved challenge right at the beginning of this process. This should have been done so many years ago, and . much as the phrase is decried by certain councillors, I and many other residents believe, for the above reasons, that FAREHAM IS FULL."

PO15

Comment

"On attending the public display at Titchfield Parish Church, I noticed that there was mention of a consideration of schools and surgeries in the area to accommodate the additional people. On further investigation with the staff present, I was informed that, apart from Whiteley, there would be no new schools, but to meet the additional pupils from the extra housing, current schools would be extended. Expanding schools and reducing their outside areas doesn't sound a wise move which can lead to over-crowding and loss of identity. No new surgeries were anticipated as well, but a revised way of attending GP surgery and other NHS provision. At a time of staff shortage already, this seems a strange way to develop - how will trained medical staff be attracted and recruited? In addition, when asked the staff informed me that there would be no new road developments apart from those planned - Newgate Lane and Stubbington by-pass and some junction 'tweaking'. With all of these houses and additional people with cars, I am not convinced that enough thought has been given to traffic movement. At present, Fareham is gridlocked for a few hours each day with no attention to improving junctions such as Delme at peak times, so I am not sure that a few junction tweaks will make any significant difference. There is no objection to some additional housing, but the proposals seem to be disproportionate to the size of the area with particular clusters in Warsash and Portchester which may well dominate those places and change them out of all recognition. This contradicts the edict of ""preserving what is best about the area"" which appears as a feature in the plan on more than one occasion. Villages which become overwhelmed and saturated will lose their identity. My concern is that the lack of emphasis on improving the public transport network to move the extra people and little change to the road structure will make the town a congested and polluted, undesirable place to live. Finally, I was told at the display that if Fareham does not produce this Plan, the Government will impose one. Two things occurred to me - first I didn't think we lived in a dictatorship! Secondly, our councillors are not responding to residents' views that ""enough is enough"" by telling Government that the area cannot become over-populated, congested and polluted, although it will take its fair share of extra housing."

PO14

Object

Infrastructure Delivery Plan The draft Infrastructure Delivery Plan does not provide sufficiently detailed information to enable a proper understanding of the impact of the development of the individual site allocations.

PO16