Letters: A flood of concerns over plan

THANK you for a good article covering the plan to build 140 houses on land next to Snails Lane in Ringwood (A&T 28th Mar).

Anybody who knows this land will have seen the flooding first-hand. Contractors spent several weeks at the beginning of 2024 digging ditches and bore holes to show that they could solve the problem.

Today, it floods just as much, and indeed the levels in the adjacent Lin Brook have risen even further. Never mind, Gladman have said in their documentation that that the water is only 1m deep and not a problem. That will be a great consolation to the home owners when they move in.

Readers who use the A338 at peak times will recognise the traffic problems now. Similar developments of this scale generate at least another 700 vehicle movements a day. With traffic in and out of the new estate from a single point, please standby for sitting in your cars a lot longer.

It is frightening to me that a developer based in Cheshire can have such a poor knowledge of the area and seek to change it so much. Their proposed layout appears to block off the main route to all the existing houses in Snails Lane, leaving the residents with a permanent two-mile detour. The use of a train seems to be the only alternative and according to what Gladman has told the Advertiser & Times, the railway station is only 1km away. Strange since Ringwood station closed in 1967!

By the time that I’m writing this letter there are more than 400 objections. I hope many more will take action by objecting to the planning application.

David Phillips

Ringwood