News: Test Valley Farm recommended for approval by planning officers

Test Valley Borough Council planning officer Emma Jones has recommended that the Northern Area Planning Committee approve the development of five houses at Test Valley Farm in Chilbolton. The controversial planning application will be discussed at the TVBC planning committee meeting on 13 Mar 2025.

The proposed development has attracted criticism from the moment it announced the building of seven homes. The plans have since then gone through several iterations, but what the planners are now recommending approval for is a development of five homes.

The plans were first put forward in August 2021. Test Valley’s webpage for them shows well over 200 objections from residents of Chilbolton, but controversy has dogged the property for many years. In 2009, it was moved into the village settlement boundary in circumstances which the Parish Council have been unable to explain despite investigating it. In 2018 the landowner also tried to release it from occupational conditions which required it to be used for agricultural purposes.

Such was the furore over the plans, the Parish Council arranged last year for a referendum of residents in which they overwhelmingly voted for Test Valley Farm to be removed from the settlement boundary.

At the Parish Council meeting yesterday, TVBC Councillor David Drew was asked if he would speak on behalf of Chilbolton. He declined, saying that he had a personal interest in this application in the sense that he knows the landowner, former Hampshire County Councillor, Andrew Gibson. Who will represent Chilbolton Parish Council at the Planning Committee is yet to be decided. It takes place on the same evening as the meeting to launch Chilbolton Community Land Trust.