Titchfield Haven visitor centre to be sold after community bid fails

The sale will include the centre's reception, café and shop, as well as Haven Cottage

A visitor centre in a nature reserve is to be sold despite an offer from a local group to take over management.

Haven House at Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve, near Fareham, will be sold by Hampshire County Council in September.

Titchfield Haven Community Hub (THCH) offered to take over the now-closed visitors centre.

A separate bid was put in by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust (HIWWT) to run the nature reserve.

But a council report said both proposals were not "viable or fully costed", and the sale has since been approved.

The visitors centre was closed in December, with the council saying at the time the move would "tackle a projected £1.8m funding gap" over the next three years.

Thousands of local residents voiced their objections to the sale when the plan was first proposed.

Residents have been campaigning to prevent the sale since the plan was first proposed in October 2022.

Lynn Murray, director of THCH, told the council meeting that "we are not the amateurs that I suspect you and your bosses think we are", the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

She added: "We deserve to have our proposal treated with professional courtesy and respect, instead of having the proposals rejected outright without any evidence and without even any attempt of dialogue."

Caroline Dinenage, MP for Gosport, said the council's decision not to engage with campaigners was a "huge error".

She also said that residents were "devastated by the decision", and that one had told her the sale is like "breaking up with a partner and not wanting them to go with anybody else".

But councillor Russell Oppenheimer, the executive member for countryside and regulatory services, said the THCH proposal was "unrealistic" and did not address the investment requirements set by the council.

Council officers said they had left the door open for other take over proposals, agreeing that any viable take-over will be considered.