Jobs uncertainty follows rejection

4:25pm Friday 10th October 2008

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THREE hundred new jobs in New Milton are said to be in jeopardy after councillors blocked expansion plans by the country’s leading property management firm.

The Peverel Group’s proposal for a new office block opposite its current headquarters in the town was thrown out after the company refused to pay more than £100,000 towards the cost of improving local roads and cycle routes.

Now bosses must decide whether to appeal against the decision or expand one of its other sites in the UK.

They have refused to pay the £109,000 “transport contribution”

describing it as a “ransom” and a “tax on local jobs”.

However New Forest councillors who voted against the plan have hit back saying the firm is employing “emotional blackmail”

to get its proposal through.

New Milton councillor Valya Schooling said the recruitment of another 300 office workers would help regenerate the town, which had seen a spate of shop closures.

She said: “The country is in economic meltdown and we need those jobs.”

Peverel had applied to build a three-storey office complex on the Queensway industrial estate.

It would have doubled their local workforce over the next two years.

Peveril says there is no threat to existing jobs in New Milton but warned that the company might consider expanding elsewhere.

Peverel’s other two sites are in Luton and Halesowen in the Midlands.

Chief executive Nigel Bannister said: “All along we had been led to believe there was nothing remotely controversial about our proposal which will see us bring 300 new jobs to New Milton.

“Now at the 11th hour, we are effectively being held to ransom in being asked to cough up this staggering sum of money or face the prospect of our application not being determined.

“This is nothing short of a tax on local jobs and now places a massive question mark over our plans to expand our operations in New Milton.”

New Forest District Council chief planning officer Chris Elliott said the council had adopted Hampshire County Council’s transportation contributions policy in April, adding: “To waive it would be to throw the policy out of the window and open the door for other developers to come back and argue the same thing.”