SHELAA list

SIR: Your edition of August 27 gives considerable coverage to the ‘developers’ wish list’ topic, and adds that “...as the city council identifies sites to meet housing needs for the future.”

First of all, I fully support the two excellent letters on the subject of “North Walls”, and agree totally with their theme and tone. Many previous letters have appeared on that general subject and all highlight the need for a comprehensive “Traffic Management Plan”, and thus access to the City Centre. With all the “future” new houses there will be an inevitable corresponding increase in the number of cars.

How are they going to reach, or pass through, the City Centre ? Where will they park? We still have no “Park and Ride” facilities across the northern part of the area. “Infrastructure” has not been mentioned and appears not to have been given the attention it really deserves with the large number of new developments around the city.

Now is surely not the time to be considering more “housing”, but instead the general Infrastructure and potential access to the historic city centre - if we want foreigners to continue visiting in their cars and coaches, and the city is to survive commercially.

Ian Holmes,

Mortimer Close,

Kings Worthy

SIR: Your article on August 20, with a map of SHELAA, suggested a most disturbing future for Winchester. If all the plans came to fruition an occupancy of just two per dwelling would increase the population of the District as a whole by 71 per cent!

Not all of the schemes will come about in the next few years, but even so, in the longer term the future looks grim. Winchester is a small city, with a compact centre, and a restricted transport network, totally unsuited to becoming a metropolis. What sort of city do we mean to leave for the generations to come?

The government’s allocation of national population growth solely in proportion to the present distribution is absurd. A nationwide plan is essential but never gets a serious mention. The South Downs National Park seems to be having some value in setting standards to the East of Winchester. Could there perhaps be a ‘Wessex National Park’, extending from Winchester to Salisbury, or even further to the West, to achieve the same all over?

In the South of England, Winchester is just part of the whole story. Project the possible growth over the whole of Hampshire! Consider just one aspect of the environment. All the water supplied to the people of Hampshire comes from the aquifers of the South Downs. The present rate of extraction is just about sustainable, but the effects of global warming will reduce availability. The demands of an increased population would entail deeper boreholes. The water table would be lowered, the chalk streams destroyed and the countryside even more parched. The notion is completely unacceptable. In this one respect among many, the population growth of Hampshire can only be very limited.

Sir Peter Innes,

Nations Hill,

Headbourne Worthy