Back in 1993 I was a councillor for West End North, and along with my Lib Dem colleagues and backed by practically every local resident I campaigned very vigorously (and successfully) to have future housing development anywhere but up Allington Lane.

It’s the last remaining large semi-rural area in the borough, it abuts the Itchen Valley Country Park so is in effect an extension of it so far as wildlife is concerned, and as a new road connecting a major development there with Eastleigh or the motorway, would be prohibitively expensive because of the railway lines and the river creating obstructions.

All additional traffic would be trying to use Fair Oak Road through Bishopstoke – gridlocked already at commuter times.

Miss Mapleson claims that 19 years ago ‘the people of Eastleigh asked for future housing development to be along Allington Lane’.

Along with everyone else, I’d love to know where she gets that from. Is it, perhaps, just another UKIP made-up ‘fact’?

Martin Kyrle.