PLANS for a £1bn development which will provide 6,000 new homes and create 5,700 jobs are to be approved today.

Homes, three primary schools, one secondary school, shops, a supermarket, a hotel, green spaces, sports facilities and a care home are to be built near Fareham as part of the Welborne Garden Village scheme.

Junction 10 of the M27 will also be improved to allow motorists to leave at Welborne and three roundabouts will be created along the A32 to provide access into the Welborne development.

The scheme, expected to take more than 20 years to complete, is set to be approved by civic chiefs at Fareham Borough Council this morning.

Documents published ahead of the meeting show plans for works at Junction 10 have a funding gap of £30m to £40m.

The report says once the scheme receives planning permission it would benefit from “further certainty which may attract additional public-sector funding streams”.

But planning bosses are requiring the submission of and approval of details of the sources of all the funding necessary to carry out the Junction 10 works before the start of any other work on site.

According to the borough council the first 690 homes, work at Junction 10 and the A32 northern roundabouts are expected to be completed by 2024 while the whole scheme is due to be completed by 2042.

As previously reported, residents raised concerns over a number of aspects of the scheme.

Objectors said the proposed site is too close to existing communities, claiming the amount of land available is insufficient to accommodate all the essential ingredients of a new community.

Other protests centred on the loss of countryside and the resulting threat to wildlife.

But in the report going before the planning committee today planning officers said the benefits of the scheme are considered to be “numerous and significant and not outweighed by any identifiable harm”.

The plans have been put forward by Buckland Development.

The new homes would range from one-bedroom apartments to five-bedroom family homes and about 30% of them are due to be affordable.

The plans also include a sports hub featuring tennis courts, a sports pavilion with day care and pre-school facilities and five-a-side football pitches.

In January 2017, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) listed Welborne as one of the 14 villages being built across the country and receiving funding from central government.