Many years ago, when the first planning applications for building on this site were made, Farringdon Parish Councillors advised the landowners that an application similar to the current model would be acceptable.

Despite this advice the applicants continued to submit a series of applications for high density developments more suited to an urban environment than a rural village, with limited facilities and virtually no public transport.

The most recent application does seem to address most of the objections previously raised by Farringdon residents, the Farringdon Parish Council and East Hampshire District Planning Department.

The Meadow was not included in the South Downs National Park when the interminable boundary shuffling exercises were being conducted so, if this application is successful, these houses will be added to the very short list of Farringdon dwellings outside the National Park Boundary.

 With one or two caveats it would appear that there are few grounds to refuse this application.

 Eastview Gardens, on the opposite side of Crows Lane has a similar number of dwellings per metre to that proposed in the application for Crows Meadow.

 Both have houses set back from the lane, although the proposed development includes an access road (shown in white in the illustration above) parallel to the existing lane and also includes provision for residents parking between the pairs of houses, a layout which takes account of one of the major objections to previous proposals, namely, the disruption that would be caused by service and resident's vehicles obstructing Crows Lane. Inevitably there will be more traffic and another access on to the lane but the numbers involved won't make a marked difference if the new residents vehicles are not forced to park on the roadside, obstructing the passage of through traffic.

 Providing there is sufficient room for the various service vehicles to access the service road, something of a problem in previous applications when space on site was at a premium, the impact on the village will be marginal.

 There will be some who object to any development of the meadow on principle, but with a history of in filling on Crows Lane it is difficult to see how this application can be refused without good reason. The planned houses are on the building line, the density is no greater than existing houses along the lane and this application seems to address most of the previous objections to development of the site.

The illustration above gives some idea of the proposed layout but the full planning application and associated documents are available to view on the North East Hants Planning Portal.