With a revised planning application for 32 retirement homes to be built on the site of the former Lymington police station, local residents have joined the calls from New Forest West Labour for more affordable housing in its place.

Writing in this week’s Lymington and New Milton Advertiser and Times, Bronwen Bridges states that ‘affordable housing is the type that is urgently required in the area, and encouraging more people of working age to live here will benefit the local economy’, whilst calling on the local councillors to ‘listen to the concerns of their electorate rather then bowing to pressure from developers’.

Fellow local resident Sue Seymour says it’s time to put the community first and that ‘we need housing for the young and those in essential but poorly paid jobs, such as nurses and carers, if we are to live in balanced, healthy communities’. 

The latest application from Churchill Retirement Living comes after a previous attempt was thwarted in 2021, following a New Forest West Labour petition in opposition to the proposed development generated support from more than 1,400 people.

You can read the letters in full here.