Fewer new homes should be planned for Basingstoke and Deane – putting less pressure on local communities, nature, schools and GPs – say council leaders in an appeal to the government.

Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s Leader Cllr Paul Harvey and Co-Leader Cllr Gavin James are urging the government to reconsider the higher housing target it has set for the borough, as the council continues to update its Local Plan as a blueprint to guide future development.

Writing to the Minister of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Matthew Pennycook MP, the leaders emphasise the good progress the council had been making until the government upped the number of new homes it had to plan for from 830 to around 1,150 per year.

The requirement to plan for significantly more houses to be built in the borough, as well as to find more land for employment uses and supporting infrastructure, was part of the updates the government made to its National Planning Policy Framework in December last year.

The changes forced the council to take a few steps back in the plan-making process. Now, to meet the government’s higher housing numbers, the council has to propose several sites, including greenfield sites, for development that weren’t in the prior plan it consulted residents on last year.

The letter questions the government’s plan for new infrastructure to support the additional development and its impact on existing infrastructure, local communities’ identities and the borough’s natural environment, including the North Wessex Downs National Landscape and its precious chalk streams.

It also criticises the government for encouraging a developer ‘free for all’ by setting higher housing targets that are more difficult for the borough to meet.

National rules state that if a council can’t demonstrate its area can meet relevant housing targets for the next five years, it has less power to refuse planning applications for land not in its Local Plan.

Cllr Paul Harvey said: “Before the government upped the borough’s housing targets, we had a Local Plan that would have worked. It would have delivered homes at a rate infrastructure could have more easily sustained. It would have better met the local housing need we have identified, including delivering affordable homes. It would have had more support from local people.

“The new target risks undermining that progress, forcing extra development that puts unnecessary pressure on our borough’s infrastructure and communities. We urge the government to really look at our borough’s circumstances and revise the housing target it has set to a more sensible level.”

Cllr Gavin James said: “A new hospital, first announced in 2019, is still more than a decade away. Many local schools and GP surgeries are being stretched, some to breaking point. And, in my view, the water companies’ failure to plan for the future means the River Test and River Loddon now have too much water being drawn from them, threatening these rare and precious habitats.

“If the government now wishes for significantly more homes to be built across Basingstoke and Deane, then we want it to explain to us how it will fund and deliver the critical infrastructure that would be needed to support them.”

Finishing their joint letter, the council leaders invite the government minister to join them in visiting certain greenfield sites the council is now having to put forward for development as they explain why they believe the borough’s higher housing target should be reconsidered.

While the council leaders wait for a reply, the council will continue to progress work to update its Local Plan. As part of this, the council is due to consult communities later this year on a draft spatial strategy setting out where new homes and places to work could go.

More information about progress to update the borough’s Local Plan is at www.basingstoke.gov.uk/lpu