WHITEHILL Town Council has voted to keep its name the same, rejecting a proposal to add the word “Bordon” to its title.

The call for the change came from resident Darron Back who described Whitehill Town Council’s name as “an anomaly” because the council represents Whitehill and Bordon. He proposed that Whitehill Town Council change its name to “Whitehill and Bordon Town Council”.

But town council leader Adam Carew, at a council meeting on March 21, explained the historic reasons for the town council’s name, which dates back hundreds of years. The key point, he said, was that while the council was keen to stress that the town’s official title is Whitehill and Bordon, the town council governs the parish of Whitehill.

The parish’s boundary stretches down to Longmoor and Greatham in the south, and to Sleaford and Frith End in the north, therefore extending beyond the limits of the town itself.

Place names are an often a contentious issue, with some residents preferring to claim to be from some areas instead of others.

“If we call it ‘Bordon’ we upset everyone in Whitehill, if we call it ‘Whitehill’ we upset everyone in Bordon,” said Mr Carew.

“There are a lot of people in Whitehill, Kingsley, Headley and Lindford who will refuse to put Bordon on their addresses.”

The town council leader went added “we are effectively a hamlet (Whitehill) and an Army town (Bordon) that have merged”, hence the disparity.

East Hampshire district councillor Mervyn Smith, who represents the town’s Hogmoor Ward, said he had been left “somewhat confused” about the town’s name after mistakenly referring to it as “Whitehill-Bordon”.

“If you come up the A3, the signing is for Bordon, when you get onto the A325 the signing is Whitehill,” he said. And, crucially, no road signs point motorists towards “Whitehill and Bordon”.

“I’m pretty confused by all this,” he added. “So perhaps new businesses might be too. At the very least I would have thought there needs to be some effort to get the signage on the roads consistent.”

While agreeing that changing road signs would be a good idea, town council chairman and mayor Sally Pond said that, with the town’s regeneration at the stage it is, a change of Whitehill Town Council’s name could cause more confusion.

“We cannot please everyone so at the present time we are quite happy to stay with the status quo,” she said.

And her fellow councillors agreed, voting unanimously to retain the name Whitehill Town Council.

Mr Carew also spoke highly of other place names in the town, praising particularly the electoral wards of Hogmoor, Chase, Deadwater and Walldown, which all have various historical significance.

This is something, he said, that had to be kept up as the town’s regeneration continues.

“We should, as part of our local heritage, be pushing our local place names,” he said. “What we’re doing is not just creating houses, but creating a community and a sense of place.”

Despite explanations, Mr Back, secretary of the Bordon and district branch of the Royal British Legion, did not seem to have changed his stance and said many people in the community have asked the same question about the town council’s name.

Although the town is officially called Whitehill and Bordon, you do not have to look far to find variations on the theme. Whitehill’s Wikipedia page refers to “Whitehill-Bordon” with Bordon’s Wikipedia page referring to “Whitehill Bordon” without a hyphen. “There are lots of anomalies,” admitted Mr Carew.