CONCERNS that homeless people could be “dumped in the middle of nowhere” if plans for ‘Pinewood Pods’ are given the green light have been raised at Whitehill Town Council.

It comes after town councillors objected to a planning application submitted for Pinewood Village Hall during a planning sub committee meeting on Tuesday night.

The ‘Pinewood Pods’ proposal plans to change the village hall into seven studio flats and three mobile homes for the homeless, with cycle parking, bin store enclosure and a storage shed.

The pods would operate similarly to bed and breakfast accommodation, offering short length stays of no longer than six months before residents are moved to a more permanent location.

But, councillors were quick to share their concerns surrounding the site’s over-development, loss of community space, economic impacts to One Stop and the Post Office, parking issues and lack of a “proper” consultation.

Town councillor Katie Anscomb, chair of the committee, said it was a “very limited time scale the council has been afforded to review all the documentation”, with Cllr Mike Steevens adding it “seems to have been forced through far too fast”.

For Cllr James Fryer, although it is a “fantastic” idea, he said the “location is terrible”, adding the town “doesn’t have the transport and there’s nothing to do”.

Cllr Roger Russell added: “Youth problems are quite major in our town – the last thing we need to do is take away a potential community facility that could be used for youth.”

But leader of the town council, Cllr Andy Tree, who is not on the committee, said no one at the meeting was actually “representing the homeless people to say from their point of view whether it is a good idea”.

He added that putting homeless people in an area that has “terrible public transport connections, effectively dumping them in the middle of nowhere”, means they are “effectively isolating them”, and asked whether that was good for their wellbeing and progression out of that situation.

For district and county councillor Adam Carew, the application has “filled me with concern”.

While he agreed something “needs to be done about homelessness”, he said he is “not sure we are the most sustainable community to put this in”, as the town doesn’t have a railway or the new town centre yet.

When the Herald went to print, 20 public comments had been submitted online, 18 of which objected to the proposals.

*Residents are urged to have their say online by February 4, at tinyurl.com/yh5rop56