Thank you to the over 250 people who attended our protest yesterday! Enough we hope to send a strong message of rejection to EHDC for Chawton Park Farm being their preferred option in their Spatial Strategy. And thank you to our wonderful MC Tony Souter and our speakers in order: Carol Palmer, Alton Society; Jason Simper Chairman, Chawton Parish Council,; Graham Webb Chairman, Beech Parish Council and Councillor Stephen Hunt EHDC.
Penns Place Protest
People, placards and posters are needed this Thursday 23rd September at 5.30pm to protest outside Penns Place for the 6.00 pm Full Council meeting (sorry wrong info given out at Protest yesterday). Also do email EHDC Councillors before the meeting – see paragraph below about this.
Many thanks to Alton Community Choir for singing the beautiful and evocative song “View the Land” by Sarah Morgan yesterday – listen to it on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/sarahmorganfoundation/view-the-land
Here’s a link to the folder of photos we have so far and grateful thanks to Chris Cowell for those. We hope it will eventually include all the speeches after a request was made for these, and more photos and footage as it comes in. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17ws05oFhUDZiCB-pi48k2-tnGzyGp3Io?usp=sharing
We now have over 2700 signatures to the petition! Need to get to 5000 now for another email to be sent automatically to Cllr Angela Glass.
Importance of Letters & Votes - Government’s Pause in the Planning Reforms
Whilst the government’s planning mandarins ‘regroup’ under Michael Gove after the shock of losing the Chesham and Amersham by election there maybe a chink of a window of opportunity opening up for us.
Below is a link to useful points made by Sir Charles Cockburn of Beech on the Nextdoor website. These may be helpful for anyone who wants to write again, or for the first time to Cllr Angela Glass Chair of the Planning Policy Committee – angela.glass@easthants.gov.uk, and Damian Hinds MP damian.hinds.mp@parliament.uk.
Here is the link to Sir Charles’ post on Nextdoor the text of which is also in the photo folder linked to above: https://nextdoor.co.uk/p/tr2DtZTg977K?utm_source=share&extras=MTc1OTIxODY2MzM0NjM%3D
Sir Charles makes the point that Chawton Park Farm will be built on pristine green field land, and strongly encourages us to email ALL councillors “to let them know that you don't want them to approve the council's strategy and that, should they do so, you will vote for someone who gives a damn about our local environment next time around”. Spot on Sir Charles.
Here is the list of all councillors and their contact details: https://easthants.moderngov.co.uk/mgCommitteeMailingList.aspx?ID=0
Meanwhile we noticed that Bob Seely MP for the Isle of Wight, was on the BBC on Saturday. He is a member of the ‘Planning Concern’ group of MPs who are anti low-density greenfield car-dependent developments – AND want to see developments that are “environment led, community led and levelling-up led”. He talked about using brownfield sites, as does Sir Charles who says:
“We should be asking local councillors what steps they have taken to join with similarly affected councils to develop an effective lobbying effort to get the scales rebalanced so that building new homes on greenfield sites in the South East is seen as an absolute no, no”
And finally, a quote from an article in the Guardian today
“As the Campaign for Rural Britain constantly points out ....... England has no shortage of brownfield housing land and it has a million unused housing permits”.
Chawton is mentioned in this article but in a ‘fait accompli’ way sadly.
So lots to think about and it would be nice if before long we were pushing against an open door..... but until that time we need to keep up the pressure!
Thank you for your continued support for this protest and all you're doing.
The Alton Society
thealtonsociety@gmail.com