Dear Editor, I would like to follow up the letter from Martin Heath on the Climate Emergency by pointing out that Basingstoke must do much more to put nature recovery, biodiversity, accessible green spaces and a healthy environment at the heart of the planning process. The recently published Vision for South West Basingstoke does not conform to national planning policy for protecting and restoring biodiversity and deserves root and branch revision. The issues raised are not just important for south-west Basingstoke but the whole Borough, concerning as it does Borough-wide Local Plan policies and decisions about sustainable development and land use.
Building a tunnel to carry an upgraded A303 road below the World Heritage Site south of Stonehenge has caused heated debate. Much of it has been fuelled by negative publicity and misunderstandings about the processes by which archaeological concerns feed into planning and delivering development. But I want to offer a rather different perspective, and argue that this is the most ambitious conservation project ever undertaken to protect and enhance Britain’s archaeological heritage.
The A303 runs for 92 miles between the M3 at Basingstoke and the A30 at Honiton, and was first designated as a trunk road in 1958. Eulogised in Tom Fort’s book
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