The Baughurst Society has a long history of working with the community to address, and where applicable, oppose planning applications in the area. Recent attempts to build 165 houses on land at the top of Bishopswoods Lane, a care home to the north of the golf course, bungalow on land south of Oak Cottage and 4 Gypsy plots in Violet Lane have all occupied the attention of the Society.
Although the application for 4 Gypsy plots in Violet Lane was rejected, the developer went to appeal. Thanks to considerable efforts by the community the appeal was in turn rejected.
Although the Baughurst Society does have a social aspect it is worth remembering that the Society has over the years fought off a number of developments that were out of keeping with the local environment. Most noteworthy of these, from the dim and distant past, was the National Grid’s proposal for a string of pylons between Bramley and Thatcham that would have gone straight through the middle of Baughurst (the Wellington arms may well have had a pylon in its back garden!)
An application for 4 traveller sites off of Violet Lane was submitted and rejected after a concerted effort by local residents to voice their concerns and objections. The developer took the planning application to appeal. At this stage the community as a whole kicked into action. Driven by a group directly affected by the application an approach to defeat the appeal was put together, central to this strategy was to engage professional planning consultants to go head to head with those of the appellant. It’s a simple fact of life that consultants cost money, so the community as a whole was asked to make whatever contribution they could to form a fighting fund. Over 50 people contributed to create a fund of just over £10,000. To cut a long story short the fighting fund enabled us to engage a planning consultant and a transport consultant to fight the appeal on two fronts. We were successful!
The application for a 120 bed care home at the top of the golf course on Bishopswood Lane. has been approved. This is despite concerns about increased traffic levels on Bishopswood Lane and on the surrounding residential roads during the construction phase.
Nonetheless, one thing that we should bear in mind is that the Golf Course want to use the profit from this scheme to build a hotel and conference centre on the site. If this were to be on the driving range site, then we should be getting ready for another battle.
There continues to be people out there who are of the view that there’s far too much empty space in Baughurst that is just waiting to be filled with various types of development ranging from 165 plot housing estate, large care homes, gypsy sites through to glamping sites!
Where appropriate members of the Baughurst Society together with friends and associates made their objections known to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council and, in the case of Violet Lane, to the planning inspectors.
The Browning Green objection letter is attached, which demonstrates the reasoning for objecting to this glamping proposal.
The appeal meeting notes with the inspectors for the Violet Lane proposal is attached below.
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