AN UPDATED plan refocusing the key priorities and actions for the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council over the next four years has been agreed.

The cabinet, which took over running the council in May, agreed on an updated Council Plan 2023 to 2027 at a borough council’s cabinet meeting on Tuesday, October 10.

The plan sets out the council’s priorities and key pledges. The plan will now go to a meeting of all councillors on Thursday, October 19 for adoption by the council.

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Council leader Cllr Paul Harvey said: “This amended plan shows we are listening as it aims to address the priorities that people, partners and business have clearly shared over many years with the council. We want to focus our resources on the things that people have told us are important to them.

“We want to make the borough that we live, work and enjoy the very best it can be. We are focusing on pride in our place. We are very clear that we take the climate and ecological emergency seriously and that it is a core thread running throughout the work of the council.

“Our services are critical to our residents and they rightly deserve focus and attention. That’s why we want to put more resources into areas like clean and tidy streets parks and open spaces.

“We want to build on the council plan published earlier this year and define our priorities. The amendments we have made reflect our focus on listening and driving forward delivery.”

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Key updated actions in the plan include providing more affordable homes, specifically social rented homes.

The cabinet also wants to move forward with an updated local -plan that reduces the number of new houses built in its early years to allow infrastructure to catch up. 

Regeneration and renewal is a theme in the plan, with a renewed focus on the regeneration of Buckskin, South Ham and Winklebury; a commitment to a new aquadrome and the wider revitalisation of the leisure park and the emphasis on the Top of the Town to start delivering plans for the future of Basingstoke town centre.

Co-leader Cllr Gavin James added: “As a new administration, we have brought a new focus to the plan and a determination to make people proud of their borough.”