FOUR Marks residents are bracing themselves for yet another planning battle as Cheshire-based developer Gladman Developments Ltd wades in with a proposal to build on a seven-acre field behind a property in Lymington Bottom.

The outline application is for a residential development of up to 65 dwellings, to include up to 40 per cent affordable housing (26 units), with a single priority-controlled junction, on land at Mount Royal, 46 Lymington Bottom, Four Marks.

Validated by East Hampshire District Council (EHDC) planners on November 1, the application has already attracted 77 public comments, every one an objection, the key message summed up in one clear statement: “The people have had enough.”

Another online objection refers to the 110-strong development off Brislands Lane at Medstead Farm. It reads: “We have just lived through two years of building houses opposite us to now have an application for houses in the field behind is our worst nightmare.”

Nearly all draw attention to the fact that the application site lies outside the settlement policy boundary for Four Marks and that, together with South Medstead, the village has already far exceeded its housing quota of 175 new homes to the year 2020, as laid down in the district council’s Joint Core Strategy (Local Plan).

There is concern about the impact of yet more residents on local infrastructure and services, of the increase in vehicle movement, particularly at the junction with the A31 Winchester Road, and of the danger imposed by construction traffic accessing the site from Lymington Bottom, a semi-rural road that takes a lot of school traffic.

While in its public consultation document, circulated to more than 700 households in Four Marks, Gladman reports that the national accident database has only one record of an accident involving a pedestrian on Lymington Bottom in the past five years, residents insist that this is “one accident too many”.

One objector continues: “Having an access road to a development of 65 homes near to a blind bend and onto a narrow busy road will significantly increase the risk of accidents and the potential for serious injury or worse.”

A family-run business with more than 30 years of experience within the land and development industry, Gladman professes to be “the most successful land promoter in the UK, obtaining planning permission on more than 90 per cent of the sites we promote”.

While Gladman sees this statement as a positive coup, the people of Four Marks see it as a threat.

Their online message to Gladman and to EHDC planners is clear: “Four Marks cannot cope with yet more people overcrowding its roads, school, doctors, shops! Our village is a ‘village’, not a town! There are plenty of houses for sale in Four Marks already. Go build somewhere else that has not just had new builds crop up everywhere. This needs to stop!”

n Four Marks Parish Council is to hold an extraordinary full council meeting on Wednesday, November 22, starting 7.30pm in the village hall, to discuss planning application number 56082/001, Mount Royal, 46 Lymington Bottom, residential development of up to 65 dwellings.