Huhne challenges county on airfield gravel pit plan

5.57.47pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 10th Jul 2008

Eastleigh MP Chris Huhne led the largest group of protesters ever to the Hampshire County Council meeting deciding the minerals plan today. The numbers attending filled the public gallery, and had to be accommodated on the floor of the chamber.

Mr Huhne spoke first in a long line of protesters particularly about the Cabinet's decision to proceed with Hamble Airfield as the preferred site for a gravel pit.

Mr Huhne said that the need for gravel extraction had been falling in every year since 1998, and that it was now just half of what it had been at the end of the nineties despite record levels of Hampshire house-building.

"It is odd that Pickwell farm has been excluded from the preferred sites on the grounds of access, yet Hamble airfield suffers exactly the same problems with congestion on Hamble Lane. This extra traffic would prolong the gridlock getting onto and off the Hamble peninsula" Mr Huhne said.

"There is also an issue with noise and pollution already in what is an historic maritime village where tourism and leisure industries like boating are key. The airfield abuts a nature conservation site. There has been no full study of the environmental impact, which opens up any decision to legal challenge.

"Perhaps most crucially, a decision to proceed would turn the airfield from a Greenfield site that is part of the strategic gap defining Hamble village into a brownfield site on which it would be much easier to build homes. That is against the wishes of the local planning authority, Eastleigh borough, and local residents.

Mr Huhne also said that he hoped that Cllr Thornber would take legal advice on the issue of potential conflict of interest at a time when both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats at Westminster were stressing the importance of probity in public life.

"The major beneficiary of a decision to proceed would be Persimmon Homes, the owners of the airfield, which along with its founder and principal shareholder Mr Duncan H. Davidson have given £42,000 to the Conservative party over recent years".