Welborne is going to be a 6,000-home development and at the last census the average number of people per home was 2.3. Welborne should incorporate a reasonable amount of affordable housing, however, so it’s possibly quite likely to be lower than this. An estimate of 12,000-13,800 people would be a reasonable projection. So is that too many people to make it a village? Well let’s look locally... Stubbington is a village, it has a population of around 15,000. Councillors Fazackarley and Cunningham are from Portchester – a village. It has even more people, about 17,000. Would Councillor Cunningham disagree and say that Portchester is a not a village, then? Indeed the largest settlement in the UK classified as a village is Eccleston up north. It has a population of 32,000. There’s clearly a lot more to it than this, but with detail still a little light there’s nothing to make me believe otherwise. I feel as though some people are so stubbornly set against Welborne that they will cling to any little detail which so obviously doesn’t carry any water. Let’s look to the positives – of additional house ownership for our young people and families to move out to. So, purely on the statistics of population, could Welborne be classed as a village? Of course it could. * This letter was submitted to The News by Tom Davies of Portchester Road, Fareham