Village steps up homes fight

9:35am Thursday 9th November 2006

An ancient East Dorset village is mobilising its defences against a massive development in green belt land, which has protected it from urban sprawl for years.

Villagers in West Parley are fighting the South West Regional Authority's plan's to build 900 homes on open fields separating the village from Bournemouth.

Earlier this year East Dorset District Council reversed its decision to support the plan at a meeting attended by more than 300 campaigners - the highest attendance at a meeting since the council's inception.

There will be a public inquiry into the scheme in April, but a result is not expected until 2008.

Now the residents' association is distributing a special survey to the village's 3,500 residents as part of its Keep West Parley Green campaign, which it hopes will raise awareness and give the village a democratic mandate to fight future applications.

Chairman of West Parley Residents Association, Richard Heaslip, said: "The official principle of green belt fields is to prevent urban sprawl and communities merging into other communities.

"Our greatest fear is that if these plans do go ahead the character of the village will be lost forever and it will just become a suburb of greater Bournemouth."

More than 64 volunteers have spent the past week distributing the survey across West Parley, but the results are not expected until the new year.

The survey includes questions about whether residents feel urgently-needed affordable housing should be built at the expense of green belt land.

West Parley is a site of recorded occupation from the Iron Age and featured in the Domesday Book in 1086.