The Plan
What’s proposed for Hampshire’s A31 corridor.
What’s Being Proposed
New housing plans for East Hampshire would see 12,000 new houses built over the beautiful and iconic countryside of Jane Austen, creating an all but continuous 14-mile urban ribbon between Farnham and Alresford.
The plan includes multiple large, stand-alone estates — many of more than 1,000 homes each — on farmland and open countryside. Along with 6,000 more houses in southern Hampshire, the construction — slated to last until 2043 — would swamp millennia-old South Downs villages and market towns, including Austen’s home of Chawton, as well as devastating the world-famous and protected chalk streams of the Itchen and the Wey.
Where It Would Happen
The proposed developments sit between and around:
Farnham and Bentley
Binsted, Chawton and Medstead
Four Marks and Ropley
Alresford and surrounding hamlets
These sites would erase the natural gaps that separate each community, removing the rural character that defines this part of Hampshire.
Why It’s a Problem
The plan doesn’t come with new infrastructure. No provision for schools, GP surgeries, roads, sewage works, or public transport has been made. Each “new community” would add further pressure to stretched local services.
Worse, there’s no need for it. New national research from the Council for the Protection of Rural England shows brownfield sites across the UK could accommodate 1.4 million houses, just short of the 1.5 million the government has promised to build.
In addition, East Hampshire District Council - whose plan this is - is about to be abolished, replaced with a larger, unitary authority whose main purpose will be to allocate housing to where it is needed and better suited, near cities and towns like Winchester and Basingstoke, and critical infrastructure, like the M3 and A34, and the South Western Main Line.
What’s Driving It
East Hampshire District Council is rushing to finalise its Local Plan before it’s merged into a new Unitary Authority, which will combine several councils across the region.
They argue that if they don’t act, central government will; essentially, if the countryside is going to be destroyed, they want to be the ones to destroy it.
Anticipating overwhelming public opposition, they also plan to consult no one.
The Bottom Line
This isn’t about providing affordable homes in the right places.
It’s about meeting targets quickly by building over the countryside that makes Hampshire special.
If this plan goes through, England will lose one of its most cherished and priceless landscapes forever.
Stop the Council! Stop the Plan! Save Austen Country!