NFDC seeks to buy former Lymington police station site for affordable housing

NEW Forest District Council wants to buy the former Lymington police station for affordable housing after two abortive bids to build retirement flats.

Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones’ office was contacted by the authority to express its interest in the Southampton Road site.

This is in the wake of Churchill Retirement Living having pulled its latest application to redevelop it into 32 retirement flats.

As reported in the A&T, it included measures to mitigate nitrate pollution concerns. This had been a planning inspector’s sole reason for dismissing an appeal against NFDC’s refusal for Churchill’s original application.

They disagreed with many of the submitted objections, including claims it would add too many homes for older people and hike pressure on local services.

Both bids for retirement flats had proved unpopular among residents, with 53 out of 54 public comments on NFDC’s website for the most recent application being objections.

More than 1,400 people had previously signed a New Forest West Labour Party petition against the proposal.

Civic group the Lymington Society was among those who argued the town did not need any more retirement accommodation.

Chairman Don Mackenzie had slammed the buying up of agricultural land to offset a development’s nitrate discharge “a national scandal”.

Following the second application’s withdrawal, Mr Mackenzie wrote to NFDC cabinet member for housing and homelessness, Cllr Edward Heron.

The letter called on him to “urgently consider purchasing the site” for the development of affordable homes to help ease the town’s “chronic shortage of such accommodation”.

Writing back to Mr Mackenzie, Cllr Heron informed him NFDC had previously been in discussions over purchasing the site.

“Following the recent developments, we have again reached out to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to express our ongoing interest in seeking to bring forward this land for affordable housing, at a realistic and sustainable price,” he wrote.

“I am sure that there are many considerations for the crime commissioner to consider and we await the outcome of those considerations.”

PCC Jones remained tight-lipped regarding any such discussions when approached by the A&T.

“In terms of the withdrawal of a planning application, I am not able to comment, however, the decision to sell the Lymington police station site is still in place and a deal has been agreed with a purchaser,” she said.

The commissioner added she had responded to Lymington and Pennington Town Council’s request she pays £1m towards affordable housing from the site’s sale proceeds.

She maintained her budget was restricted to funding policing and crime reduction services only.

“I have no legal powers to pay for social housing,” PCC Jones said.

Mr Mackenzie acknowledged an increasing national need for retirement accommodation was likely but argued the NFDC Local Plan did not protect areas including Lymington from being overwhelmed.

He said: “The society will be starting a campaign in the near future to demand a new Local Plan which limits the number of such flats allowed in the district and which brings forward much stricter enforcement of affordable housing allocations on new sites.”