Halt Harnham Housebuilding is a community-led group of Salisbury residents banding together to fight the Trowbridge-based Wiltshire Council's determination to bulldoze over Harnham's fields, destroy sensitive habitats, and clog our roads with traffic.

We urgently need your help - please donate whatever you can spare to fund the expert planning and legal consultants and campaign materials we need to stop this greenfield destruction and prevent traffic chaos in and around Harnham.

You can see the impact already of recent greenfield developments in Harnham along Netherhampton Road; destruction of fields and habitats and traffic chaos - all with a lack of long-term provision to cope with the influx of new residents and vehicles. Those battles are lost - but the next one is about to be fought...

Wiltshire Council is trying to rush through more lucrative new-build housing sites in Harnham without any proper consultation with us, the residents. They would prefer to ignore local opinion and instead destroy our pristine greenfield sites rather than work creatively, collaboratively and with vision to address Salisbury's real long-term development needs. This cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged. We need your support as we fight these plans by insisting on legitimate consultation and by scrutinising and countering Wiltshire Council's own "evidence" and assumptions.

Sites "8" and "9" in Wiltshire Council's Local plan are better known to us in Salisbury as the ancient farmland south of Harnham in between Coombe Road and Odstock Road and West of Old Blandford Road. These fields have been used by generations of residents and visitors to exercise, walk dogs, and for respite from stressful lives, taking paths trodden for thousands of years. They also provide precious breeding and feeding habitats for some of our most iconic Salisbury species including the Skylark, the Peregrine Falcon, the Barn Owl, and several species of bats as well as small mammals and invertebrates. The fields adjoin and form part of the protection for the wonderful and much cherished Lime Kiln Down Nature Reserve with its abundance of rare species and sensitive habitats. The field that will be built over also face the AONB of the Ebble Valley, threatening light pollution and sewerage escape.

These sites might conveniently 'tick a box' for Wiltshire Council's quotas, but when the fields are concreted over they will be lost to nature and to you forever. Scandalously, it will also do little to address the most urgent housing needs of the city. What it will achieve is to bring Harnham to a rush hour standstill and create rat-runs through its neighbouring villages like Coombe Bisset, Homington, Odstock and Nunton as commuters, hospital staff and locals desperately try to evade the gridlock. This will also make it more challenging for emergency vehicles coming to and from the Ambulance Station and District hospital to get through - when every second counts.

We are asking you to take our campaign to another level and help fund this fight to demand proper consultation and to Halt Harnham Housebuilding. With our goal of raising £7,000 we can;

• Employ an independent expert planning consultant to take the fight to the Council in their language – with powerful procedural, legal, and technical arguments

• Fund expert nature and traffic analysis to prove the Council's plan to develop sites 8 & 9 is both destructive to nature and unviable - due to its negative impact on roads and services.

• Pay for the printing of posters and leaflets to help spread key messages across Harnham and the wider city to make sure everyone knows why the Wiltshire development plan is flawed and what is at stake with the permanent loss of Sites 8 and 9 to concrete and streetlights.

• Secure the services of other professionals to validate, endorse and promote the work of the Halt Housing Housebuilding group and the wider community.

We know £7,000 is lot of money - but this is what we need to raise to take on the Council and win. Between the thousands of residents of Harnham and other people concerned that Wiltshire Council is destroying our green fields and ignoring our democratic rights to consultation we can reach that goal. We kindly request your support us in any way possible. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. Every donation counts - be it a few pounds or a few hundred pounds.

The funds raised will be managed by appeal beneficiary and Treasurer Peter Ward, a respected local business owner and qualified financial planning consultant. All spending will be scrutinised and approved by the Halt Harnham Housebuilding steering committee.

Importantly, we'd also like to welcome new members and volunteers to the Halt Harnham Housebuilding movement - please search for us on Social Media at https://www.facebook.com/Halt.Harnham.Housebuilding or https://www.instagram.com/halt_harnham_housebuilding/ to follow our news. You can also sign our petition at https://www.change.org/halt_harnham_housing or get in touch via email at harnham.housing@gmail.com

Thank you for your time and interest; together we can stop this.

The Halt Harnham Housebuilding community includes ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds who are outraged and who, together, are passionately dedicating their time and energy to fight back against the development plans for Salisbury concocted in the corridors of County Hall, Trowbridge; plans designed by Wiltshire councillors and planners to meet targets, raise funds, and enrich land owners rather than target the real housing needs of our beautiful City and its residents.