WHO remembers that daft Eighties pop song, Star Trekkin’?

Affectionately taking the mickey out of Captain Kirk, Spock and ‘Beam me up’ Scotty, it was a surprise Number One.

Strolling home from a packed public meeting on Wednesday, I found it going round and round in my head. An earworm, they call it – when a tune just won’t leave you alone. “Star trekkin’ across the universe, Boldly going forward, ’cos we can’t find reverse.” That’s the line that did it.

I’ll tell you who needs to find reverse, and pretty quickly. Wiltshire Council. It’s blithely assuring us that burying swathes of perfectly good farmland along Netherhampton Road under 740, (and potentially up to 1,300) homes will have “no major adverse effects”. Really? Are any of its planners and consultants actually familiar with Harnham, or indeed with the roads around Salisbury’s city centre? Or are they Klingon invaders in disguise?

My meeting was organised by Harnham Neighbourhood Association, and funnily enough, none of those attending (some peering in through the windows, because there wasn’t even standing room) seemed very keen on the development. Neither, at their own meeting on Monday, were the residents of Netherhampton, who fear their rural parish (population 493) will be swamped.

Salisbury City Council is worried, too. The site is outside its domain, but the traffic it generates will blight the lives of city residents for generations to come.

The trouble with Salisbury is its geography. All those rivers, bridges, narrow main roads lined with housing. Honestly, finding an enormous empty plot that will generate massive profits is enough to drive any hardworking property developer nuts!

Our unitary authority’s not helping itself, let alone us.

Instructed by the government to deliver zillions of homes, few of them affordable on local wages, whilst still flogging off council houses, does it challenge this madness?

Does it pursue the sensible suggestion of creating a new ‘garden town’ in the north of the county, with properly planned transport links?

No, it simply obeys mindlessly, and refuses to send a planning officer to Harnham to listen to residents’ views.

The land alongside the cattle market was put on a ‘reserve list’ of housing sites a few years ago, despite a multitude of objections. Now, being unable or unwilling to reverse this patently stupid decision, Wiltshire officers are boldly going forward in defiance of public opinion in the hope that an inspector appointed by a build-at-all-costs government will back them. Which brings me back to that pesky song.

Alongside a constant traffic jam, breathing in the fumes, it’ll be “life, Jim, but not as we know it” for Harnham folk.

I bet you’ll be humming that all week now!

anneriddle36@gmail.com *Submit your views via the Wiltshire Housing Site Allocations Plan link on Wiltshire.gov.uk, or write to Spatial Planning, Economic Development & Planning, Wiltshire Council, County Hall, Bythesea Road, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, BA14 8JN