Rye Common New Village Proposal

11 November 2016

By email to:

Dear Sir

At its council meeting on Monday 7November 2016, Odiham Parish Council voted unanimously to submit a comment of concern and objection to the vision statement published by Bell Cornwell relating to a proposed new village at and attaching to, Rye Common.

This site bridges borders of the parishes of Odiham and North Warnborough and Crondall. OPC notes that Crondall PC has already submitted a response in objection to the vision and OPC wishes to note that it supports and endorses this submission fully.

OPC wishes to further make its own comments arising from the Parish Council meeting at which this vision was discussed:

1. The land proposed for development is agricultural land with high productive value. As such the cost of this development would be unjustifiably high in terms of the productive output lost should the development proceed.

2. OPC has previously raised concerns, related to previous applications for more modest development, that this area is served by little if anything in the way of infrastructure. Roads are few and narrow, there are no shops or community services in the area and access to public transport is almost non-existent. Mains drainage is not available in this location.

3. The A287 road is already estimated to run at approximately 65-70% capacity and the added burden of new traffic flows relating to up to 1,900 new properties would potentially take the road past its capacity. Even at current traffic volumes in practical terms the road is already past its current capacity at certain times of the day and is inaccessible from some junctions close to the prosed site access points during busy periods. As the surrounding road network is of small and narrow roads, the overspill as frustrated drivers seek new indirect routes would be heavy.

3. An increased population in 1,900 new homes at this location would add greatly to the education burden that the secondary schools in Fleet and Odiham are already struggling to cope with. The changes to school catchment areas needed to ensure that students in the new houses could be accommodated on existing school sites would have widespread knock on displacement effects, in particular to the students from Hook and Hartley Wintney who currently attend RMS in Odiham.

OPC sees this application is speculative and neither the need nor the benefits of such a development are currently apparent to the Council.

OPC also draws attention to the fact that the emerging Odiham and North Warnborough Neighbourhood Plan does not support development of this nature or in this location.

In summary, Odiham Parish Council is of the opinion that this development is not appropriate in this location and does not have the support to progress with any real possibility of success.

Yours faithfully

Mrs Sarah Weir

Clerk to Odiham Parish Council

CCDistrict Cllrs Ken Crookes, Stephen Gorys and John Kennett

County Cllrs Glen

Ranil Jayawardena MP

Tel: 01256 702716 website email: