A halt to the home building

Having reported that Grainger had decided to downgrade the number of homes it intended to build in the West of Waterlooville MDA plan from 1000s of homes to under 200. The company is now reported to have abandoned the idea of building any homes at all in the immediate future.

This is backed up by the complete removal of the portable cabins and digging hardware from near the roundabout. It appears they are not going to be returning soon, as the site is completely deserted. They did however finish building the roundabout, although that took a ridiculously long time as the company seemed to drag its feet. George Hollingbery capitalised today by appearing on BBC news and indirectly suggested he was the person to stop it.

Bizarrely the BBC said the development was supposed to be the biggest development of green housing in the South. They obviously hadn't checked the pathetic green specifications being used by the developers. As stated here in an earlier post, the fact there will be delays in developement, means that by the time the housing market picks up, far tougher green building specs will be in place. Given that the rampant financial gambling of the last decade will lead to tougher lending policies, then the housing market is unlikely to be anything like we have just seen. It will be much more restricted and conservative.

No specific updates about Taylor Wimpey who had people working on their site yesterday. What must be remembered is that both companies still own the land and can apply for new applications to build there in the future. The only thing that will save us from future house building is a major change in policy from central government, or the companies sell or lease the land for agriculture use. Now the land is in the hands of developers it will be a miracle if they do not eventually develop the land, only government intervention is likely to stop them

Hyden Farm to go Free Range??

A sad state of affairs. It seems that Hyden Farm might drop it's organic status and become free range. In an interview with the BBC, Richard Jones today indicated that organic feed was becoming to expensive and people were buying cheaper produce.

For those who are unfamiliar with Hyden Farm, it is very close to the 'Bat and Ball' pub and Hambledon cricket ground, about a miles walk from Clanfield. You can see the chickens and ducks from the road side.

I sincerely hope that Richard doesn't have to change. We need to put a higher priority and make food a bigger part of our budgets, it is far more important than other trivial stuff.

Support your local farm, buy local and organic, you can't get much better than that!

Hyden Farm


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Grainger downgrades Waterlooville MDA

The local paper has reported that Grainger is now going to build 180 homes on the farm land near Waterlooville, instead of the 1,500 or so they planned.

However this may not be as good as it first seems. Firstly they seem to state that this smaller scale project is purely while the market is in such a poor state, or in other words when it picks up, they will build more homes.

The other issue is that the smaller number of homes means that the 'public' buildings and infrastructure won't be built and any development will now be piecemeal.

But on the positive side, by the time the market does pick up (we are in a depression, don't delude yourself that this is a little recession!), the environmental standards for building will be much higher. So hopefully if the 1,500 homes are built eventually, then they will be of a higher eco standard.

All in all though, it would be best if the land remained green.