ALL power to the group set up to keep Popham Airfield open and I wish them well in their endeavours (Popham Airfield: Campaign launched to fight 3,000-home plans - Basingstoke Gazette 16th May 2024).

The past few weeks have seen a great range of community activities taking place at the airfield and long may its success continue. So that begs the question, why choose to destroy this popular community asset, and replace it with 3,000 houses, when there are better alternatives that can serve Basingstoke?

READ MORE: Campaign launched to fight 3,000-home development plans for Hampshire airfield

And, why does the council want to subject our young families in need of housing to an isolated location where it will take many, many years, to provide the infrastructure needed, assuming it is provided at all. In failing to plan properly, and by failing to bring forward Manydown after 25 years, one wonders why on earth they have decided to sacrifice a much-loved community airfield? We need housing, and well-planned housing with the right infrastructure, but why keep picking sites that never get delivered?

As a resident of Bramley, I have seen our village suffer from the building of hundreds of houses because of “planning by appeal”- all caused by the council’s poor record of making sensible planning decisions. This draft plan seems to lack an evidence base that has considered the ability to actually deliver housing, and puts development in unsustainable areas far removed from the town itself. I fear that villages like mine, Bramley, will suffer yet more housing when the Inspectors decides the council has not done enough to show it has considered all options open to it. New housing should be placed where existing infrastructure can be improved and where the demand for homes exists – in or around Basingstoke itself. Surely that is the approach needed now in order to protect Bramley and other communities who have been most impacted by uncontrolled development in recent years.

Bruce Ansell

Bramley Green Road

Bramley

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