COUNCILLORS have backed calls from residents to reject the number of new homes planned for the borough - but have resisted a campaign to pause the local plan update.

Government calculations could mean as many as 17,820 new homes need to be built in Basingstoke and Deane by the end of 2038-39 - and more than 100 people gathered outside the council offices earlier this month to say that is too much.

It could see some of the borough’s most sensitive landscapes disappearing under concrete forever, including land surrounding the Loddon and Test rivers.

At a meeting of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s economic, planning and housing committee on Thursday, councillors unanimously voted in favour of rejecting the number of new homes, which is set under the government’s standard methodology procedure.

Cllr Paul Harvey, leader of the Basingstoke and Deane Independent Group, said he felt so “strongly” because of the level of representation from the public.

It came just minutes after his motion to pause the entire process of updating the borough’s local plan failed by just one vote.

Speaking to The Gazette, Cllr Harvey said: “Some of the most environmentally sensitive land in our borough would be developed out of all recognition.

“If you take climate change seriously and recognise that we would be destroying the river Loddon and Test, we have to draw the line somewhere.

“Basingstoke can’t take any more without doing irrevocable damage,” he added, saying the council cannot build as many houses as is being suggested whilst transforming the town centre into what they want it to be.

“We need to be pushing for the recovery of our economy,” the councillor of 20 years added.

Councillors on the EPH committee convened on Thursday (September 16) to continue debating the borough’s proposed spatial strategy, a key component of the local plan.

It contains several policies for future development, including the important of the climate emergency and brownfield first, as well as a draft shortlist of sites that would make up the roughly 8,000 homes not already allocated. And Cllr Harvey said it was a “shocking indictment of the planning system” that they were having to debate different developments without the full evidence base, including water cycle studies and transport assessments.

His motion to pause the local plan process was supported by Cllr Andy McCormick, who told the meeting: “I really want to support the report, but what I have heard tonight has made that pretty much impossible to do.

“What is really concerning me is that it is cart before the horse, we will have sites put forward and we will invent a transport system that will make it work.”

Council leader Cllr Ken Rhatigan had previously told The Gazette: “If we don’t get a local plan, we will have development by appeal, and that won’t be good for anybody.”