Eastleigh'S allotments wars have spread to Westminster with a call for Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott to intervene.

Allotment land at Woodside Avenue, South Street and Monks Way is under threat as Eastleigh Council pieces together a massive town centre redevelopment.

Council chiefs say proposals to develop allotment sites and move plot holders to alternative land will help meet a desperate need for affordable homes as well as protect countryside areas.

But in one of the biggest shows of protest ever seen in the town, angry allotment gardeners have been conducting a long-running campaign to stop more than 500 new homes being built on their plots.

It is a battle due to be played out in the autumn when a public inquiry currently looking at Eastleigh's new local plan blueprint will consider the matter.

But Eastleigh's prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Conor Burns has already been to the House of Commons to plead the case of the plot holders with shadow local government minister Caroline Spelman.

Now she has written to John Prescott asking him to intervene and take the decision away from the council.

Mr Burns said: "When Michael Howard visited the Woodside allotments earlier this year he promised the plot holders that we would do all we could to help. This was not a hollow promise - he meant it and we have delivered on it.

"It is clear that the council is not listening to the real concerns of the plot holders and the wider community in the town over this damaging decision to build on allotment land."

Mr Burns claimed allotment holders were being treated in a high-handed and unacceptable way by the council, which had "simply stopped listening to those with different views."

He added: "I have also visited all three of the alternative allotment sites with the leaders of the Eastleigh and Bishopstoke Allotments Association and they are of very poor quality."

But Liberal Democrat council leader Keith House said the council was continuing to work very hard with the allotment association to provide the best possible quality allotments in the borough.

"That's why we are investing very heavily in a number of new allotment sites close to where plot holders live. Those allotments will be at least as good, if not better, than any of the existing ones."

He added: "Conor Burns and the Conservatives know there is a crying need for new affordable housing and their own councillors want us to build over 1,000 houses more than we are currently planning to do - yet they refuse to say where."