East Meon Village Voice

This website has been set up to promote open communications on big issues in East Meon. It is intended to complement the existing official communications. The current big issue within the village is the East Meon Neighbourhood Plan (NP) and this website is currently dedicated to that single issue. We hope that this website will give you a reasonable understanding of the issues and arguments (which are not black and white), and more than can be gleaned from a pop-in session, or from Meon Matters.

The NP issues are complex. We have set up a forum to promote interactive debate on these issues. There is a lot of information on the East Meon Neighbourhood Plan website. We will try not to duplicate the information presented there.

Parish Council

Only the Parish Council have the power to halt or stop the Neighbourhood Plan, so the elections were very important. There were a record number (for any East Hants election) of 20 candidates. The results are here

Minutes to meetings should be posted here. The last meeting was on 16th November.

The Parish Council now forms the new Steering group. If minutes are published they will normally appear here. These minutes are on the website but not currently linked. There has not yet been a full explanation of why the Steering Group decided that it was in the village's best interest to have a neighbourhood plan, we trust that more thought went into it then evidenced by these minutes. The housing needs assessment survey results have also been published

Leadership Group for the Neighbourhood Plan

A new team of George Thompson, Clint Hanson, Steve Ridgeon and Chris Moor were appointed in August. They seem to be busy, working to a visible process, and making their minutes publicly available here.

A well attended public meeting was held on Saturday 14th November, their presentation is available here. It is encouraging that this group recognise the importance of landscape and the will of the village to not have large developments outside the village boundary.

The next stage will be the all important site selection. Watch this space!

South Downs National Park Draft Local Plan issued

The draft local plan is the context in which our Neighbourhood plan will reside (together with other policies such as the national plan policy framework). It is interesting that it states that is is the first local plan in the country to put the landscape first, so hopefully will align the village's priorities. The plan is now closed for consultation. It is a large document and not the feint hearted but may be of interest to some.

Here is the feedback made on behalf of the village: "East Meon Parish Council welcomes and supports the range of policies designed to ensure the protection of the National Park in accordance with its purposes. It notes the provision in SP23 for the allocation of sites for approximately 15 housing units in East Meon. The East Meon Neighbourhood Plan is being prepared with the objective of making such provision, but any allocation will need to have regard to the constraints imposed by the outstanding and unique landscape surrounding the village and the setting of the village within it."

In my opinion East Meon has taken a higher allocation than it should have. Other Tier 4 villages (with the exception of Greatham) have lower allocations. We have a higher allocation because the SDNPA assessed we had suitable sites for 16 new dwellings in their SHLAA report and the village through its Neighbourhood Plan process declared that we had potential sites for over 50 houses. The SHLAA sites are no longer available, and nearly all the potential sites fail to meet the SDNPA draft plan guidelines. However it looks like we are now lumbered with the 15 allocation.

This was my feedback to the Draft Plan.

"Overall I found the document to be comprehensive and thorough, and a welcome development in the protection of the National Park. I commend you for making landscape your priority. My main concern as a resident of East Meon, is that the allocation seems high compared with other Tier 4 villages. Our Tier 4 allocation is partly based on frequent bus service to Petersfield, and by having a local shop, neither of which would stand much objective scrutiny. East Meon has an allocation of 15 whereas most of the other Tier 4 villages have an allocation of 11 (or 6 where there is not obvious capacity available). Mr Paterson explained to me at your roadshow in Meonstoke that other factors came to bear, which is fair enough as long as there is demonstrable consistency.

From my perspective (and others in the village) it is regrettable that the village has not tried very hard to secure an accommodation with the SDNPA on the allocation at this draft stage. They will be performing a detailed site by site analysis but this will not be completed during your consultation phase. I would like to explain to you why there are very few sites for development, mostly ruled out by landscape, availability and access. In the SHLAA process you identified 2 sites as being suitable... EA128 and EA129. The former does not meet your own plan guidance on use of gardens (page 128 section 7.36). There are no guarantees that EA129 will be made available, since this site is owned by the parish and covenanted to protect it from development - even if the legal covenants can be overcome there is a very high risk that the parish would not agree to its sale From a landscape perspective I understand that your Landscape officer has significant reservations about all the large sites to the south of the village boundary (which is consistent with the SHLAA report). Additionally inside the village boundary I would say that it would be very unwise to further over-load the single track lanes i.e. Workhouse Lane, Temple Lane and Frogmore Lane where traffic is already a serious blight and there are significant safety issues with egress from these lanes. You will be aware that that the main sewerage is full to over-capacity.

There are a few small sites but most of these are again unsuitable and planning permission has been previously refused on some sites.

We have the largest parish in East Hampshire but you are discouraging us from looking outside the village boundary, despite explicit policy support for the reuse of previously developed land in the countryside, under certain conditions (SD22).I believe that the parish believes in fair play and that we should take our fair share. So if the SDNPA were to give us an allocation consistent with other villages (with little suitable available capacity) then sites would be found (i.e. sites which are not ideally suited but would provide the least impact from a Landscape perspective).

So where does that leave us?

The East Meon Neighbourhood Plan is gamely trying to address the issues above, but success at referendum is uncertain. In my opinion the Local Plan for East Meon would be best handled by the SDNPA and not through a neighbourhood plan process. However a significant reduction in the allocation would significantly improve the chances of the neighbourhood plan's success. I would strongly urge you to consider reducing the East Meon allocation now for a win/win outcome."

Our discussion forum

Share your opinions with the rest of the community. We will only properly explore the issues by having diverse opinions stated. Go on have your say (your identity is protected). Please let us know (use link below) if you do post anything as there are a large number of trolls attacking our site, and we may not spot your valid posts (when we delete all their entries).

Contact us

If you would like to contact us you can send us an e-mail. Anything sent to this email address may be made public - please make it clear if you do not want the content shared.