Local Basingstoke MPs Maria Miller, Kit Malthouse and Ranil Jayawardena have joined forces with Steve Brine MP, Flick Drummond MP and Damian Hinds MP to ask the Government to take immediate action to ensure plans for a new Hampshire Hospital are considered before a speculative planning application to build four new distribution warehouses on a neighbouring site. The Hospital is one of the 40 new Hospitals announced by the Prime Minister in the Government’s Election Manifesto.
Maria said, “Junction 7 of the M3 has been identified as a preferred location for the new Hospital and we cannot allow that to be jeopardised by speculative applications coming forward which could eat up existing road and motorway capacity before the Hampshire Hospitals Trust has been able to complete their planning application. We need to put the health of the community first. The NHS Hospital design and planning process is a complex and lengthy process. Our Hospital Trust need time to get that right. In the meantime we need the Government to ensure the preferred site is protected from planning applications coming forward.”
County Councillor and Hospital Governor Stephen Reid praised the action of the local MPs “Some people think it would benefit Basingstoke to have a large distribution warehouse complex. But I am sure all of them , if they had to choose , would say that a new Hospital is more important.”
“The Borough Council is quite rightly producing a strategy plan for the South West of Basingstoke but that is not yet ready. Whilst they complete that important vision, we don’t want to see important fields picked off one by one by developers who have no reason to look at the bigger picture. Our planners need time and the call-in would buy them that time. A new hospital is of strategic importance. Warehouses are not.”
Flick Drummond, MP for Meon Valley commented; “Junction 7 is by far the best new hospital site for my constituents as it offers the quickest transport links and parking provision.”
“The trust must be allowed to spend the right amount of time getting the plans right without other planning applications compromising that process. It’s clear to me warehouses need to come second to this exciting new healthcare provision for a good slice of Hampshire’s population."
Hampshire MPs have all called on Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, to issue a holding direction and then call in the planning applications submitted to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to build up to four distribution warehouses at Junction 7 on the M3 motorway. It is understood the planning application could be put before Councillors for approval as soon as this month.
The MPs believe that the call in is needed because the planning applications could seriously compromise Junction 7 area as a preferred site for the new Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital. The area has a constrained local and national road network; Hampshire Highways response to the warehouse application has identified it would create further congestion problems on the A30. The Six MPs believe that without a planning application from the Hospital Trust it is impossible for Hampshire Highways and the Highways Agency to accurately assess road capacity and agree mitigation that might be required to also accommodate up to four warehouse distribution centres.
The MPs have set out in a letter to the Secretary of State that the economic benefit from the four warehouse distribution centres needs to be carefully considered against the benefit of essential healthcare infrastructure required to serve the people of North and Mid Hampshire which, as a result of continued house building over the last 2 decades, continues to grow with an additional 67 000 people in the area by 2043, and a predicted 123% growth in those aged over 90.
The power to hold and call in an application is exercised by Government sparingly, where matters of significant national interest and policy are concerned. The MPs believe that as the site is potentially part of the Government’s national hospital building programme the Secretary of State’s power can be used
