Garden village work needs to start as soon as possible

THERE was a time when talk of work beginning on a new town to the north of Fareham in 2016 seemed quite some way off into the future.

Now, of course, that date is in the rearview mirror and receding further into the distance – and there is still no sign of work beginning on Welborne.

The town was viewed as the saviour of other green spaces in the area – and would safeguard strategic gaps between other communities, notably between Stubbington and Gosport.

But as time has passed, and delay has piled on to delay, we still seem to be no nearer to seeing the first house on those fields, let alone the town being completed. And now those strategic gaps are under increasing threat.

The legal wranglings and arguments over Welborne have dragged matters out for years.

The cash needed to go ahead with the essential upgrading junction of the M27’s junction 10 was finally secured earlier this year.

But that ambitious project must be completed before work on the homes in the mooted garden village can even start.

And obviously the pandemic has set the whole undertaking back as well.

As a result, it would hardly be surprising to hear that the timeframe for building the village’s 6,000 homes has been put back yet again.

The planning inspectorate is at loggerheads with Fareham Borough Council and its ‘delivery partner’ Buckland over the rate at which those homes can be built.

This village needs to be built sooner rather than later – it has already dragged on far longer than anyone would have wanted.

New houses are urgently needed, and this is a site which has been overdue for many years now. They need to be built while ordinary working men and women could still feasibly afford them.