AT the 11th hour, rural villages north of Alton have escaped inclusion in one of the government's high growth sub-regions for the South East Plan - but what happens next is worrying experts. The proposed boundary for the Western Corridor and Blackwater Valley sub-region, an area proposed for high economic development under the draft plan, originally included villages across North Hampshire such as Odiham, North and South Warnborough, Blounce, Mill Lane, Greywell, Crondall, Ewshot, Long Sutton and Well - all lying within Hart district In the Borough of Basingstoke and Deane, the villages of Dummer, Farleigh Wallop, Broadmere, Ellisfield, Winslade, Herriard, Southrope, Bagmore, Weston Patrick and Upton Grey were similarly "in". However, following an amendment tabled by Hampshire county councillor for Odiham Jonathan Glen, at a meeting last week of the regional planning committee of the South East Regional Assembly, 20 exclusions were accepted. The villages will now be in an area designated as "the rest of Hampshire". Hopes are high that this will mean less pressure for housing than in the more urban Western Corridor and Blackwater Valley sub- region, an area centred on Reading and stretching from Slough to Newbury and including towns in the Blackwater Valley and Basingstoke. Local campaigners are pleased at the exclusions, but worried that they don't go far enough. Hugh Sheppard - of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), who has fought long and hard for the exclusions - said: "This is a good result for CPRE's campaign to ensure that the importance of the countryside, rural communities and the rural economy is properly recognised under the South East Plan, but in Hart, and in Basingstoke and Deane, there are villages such as Hartley Wintney, Rotherwick, Kingsclere and Burghclere that will need real protection from the implications of being within a recognised high growth area. "The South East Plan is bound to mean more housing pressure on rural communities, particularly those within the sub-regions. This will be hard to resist unless government realises that local authorities must be empowered to draw up local development frameworks with teeth. Otherwise, developers will still be able to rely on the appeal system to build more and more houses in places where a local authority and a local community are in agreement they don't want them." At last week's meeting, Mr. Glen argued that, with Farnham confirmed as out of the sub- region, change was justified for those villages which relate more to the south, east and west, than they do to the north. Others at the meeting disagreed on principle because the committee had already decided that no further changes should be allowed, but a show of hands confirmed the change. Afterwards Mr Glen, a Hampshire cabinet member working on special strategy, sounded a note of caution. "I didn't expect to win the argument. What they said is there will be no more changes to any more boundaries, so we got in their at the eleventh hour, at the 59th minute! "There is definitely a feel-good factor. People believe that if they are inside the Western Corridor, there is going to be more pressure for housing in their area, and if they are outside of it, there won't be so much pressure. They are correct to a small degree. But the fact that a line cuts a parish in half does not mean that part of a parish is going to get all the housing and the other part won't because every district and borough will have its own plan." Scanning a 20 year period from 2006 to 2026, the proposed SE Regional Plan expects a development rate throughout Hampshire of 6,100 new homes each year. The part of North Hampshire which lies within the Western Corridor and Blackwater Valley area is expected to contribute around 1,300 (although the fear is that it could be considerably higher) and the South Hampshire Sub-region, based on Portsmouth and Southampton is anticipating some 4,000 homes each year, leaving 800 for the 'rest of Hampshire' Mr Glen said that SE England as a whole has been asked to look at 36,000 houses each year. However, the Western Corridor committee wants to follow regional planning guidance, which set the housing figure for SE England at 28,900. There are fears that John Prescott will override these local wishes. "John Prescott isn't going to like this, so there's a sword of Damacles hanging over us all and we'll know whether it's going to be left hanging or whether it's going to come down on us like a ton of bricks in about February/ March next year. "He can throw out all this hard work we've done, but if he does that, you want to stand back and watch the sparks fly, because I imagine there will be a major meeting of minds among all those who are involved in this process. "They will say well, enough's enough - if he's not going to give us credit for us using our abilities to try and create some quality of life in the south east of England, then we'll just leave it to him. "If John Prescott repudiates the whole lot and refutes all the arguments we've put forward and says you're going to look at 36,000 houses minimum, then that would make a big difference because then you're talking about greenfield sites being used up, brownfield sites being eaten up within seconds, because there aren't that many left. That would have a major effect on whether you're in or out of the Western Corridor. "I want the counties to be given back the powers of the structure plan. I don't want regionalism to take over planning in the country because it's using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and I am extremely worried about the powers that John Prescott might use to defy what we're trying to do to create, what I would call, a pleasant environment for everyone to live in."
