Damian issued the following statement today:
The availability of water in the northern part of the East Hampshire constituency, including the Alton area, has come under increasing scrutiny following South East Water's response to Basingstoke’s Local Plan.
South East Water stated that the area known as WRZ4 - which covers Basingstoke and extends into parts of Alton and the surrounding area - is forecast to face a supply-demand deficit. In simple terms, this means that the amount of water available, much of it drawn from local chalk aquifers, is not expected to keep pace with local growth.
This raises serious questions, not only about the long-term resilience of water supplies for existing customers especially, for example, in times of drought, but also about whether the area can sustainably accommodate new housing development on the scale currently being envisaged.
I recently met with South East Water to discuss the challenges facing water supply in this part of Hampshire and to seek assurances about whether the necessary infrastructure will be delivered to support the scale of housing growth currently being proposed.
Local authorities, including East Hampshire District Council and Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, have also been working with South East Water to understand both the current constraints and future pressures on the network, and what these mean for planned housing growth.
What is clear is that South East Water does not expect to be able to support the forecast level of housing growth in East Hampshire until major new infrastructure is in place.
The company must now provide greater certainty over the timetable for these upgrades, including the proposed pipeline from Surrey Hills. Current indications suggest that this scheme is still likely to take a number of years.
There also remains uncertainty surrounding water abstraction at Greywell Fen, where South East Water is challenging the Environment Agency's decision to halt abstraction from this environmentally sensitive source. In the meantime, abstraction from the Lasham Aquifer is being used as an interim measure, subject to a capped volume and ongoing environmental monitoring to ensure there are no adverse impacts.
Again, I put to the Housing Minister that the Government's decision to double East Hampshire's housing target is unrealistic and wrong. There are many reasons why the target should be reconsidered, but one of the most fundamental is that the existing water infrastructure is not capable of supporting development on that scale without infrastructure investment which has yet to materialise.
I am pressing, too, for water companies to become statutory consultees on major housing applications. Given the increasing pressure on water resources and the need to ensure that the right infrastructure is in place, it is increasingly difficult to justify their exclusion from the planning process. Planning decisions should not be made in isolation from the realities of water availability and environmental sustainability.
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