UP TO 300 jobs could be on the line if a new housing development goes ahead, businesses have warned.

Plans for a new 3,500-home development would mean demolition of an industrial estate that currently houses at least 50 firms.

They have called on developers to sacrifice up to 300 planned homes to save the site and workers’ livelihoods.

The proposal, at present called North Whiteley, which would include three schools and 50 hectares of green space, was submitted by developers Taylor Wimpey, Crest Nicholson, Bovis Homes and JGP Lakedale to Winchester City Council back in March.

But businesses on the Bury Farm Industrial Estate at Curdridge say they are only now realising how the development will affect them.

Planning documents submitted by developers say the industrial estate will be demolished for the development, but said jobs lost there would likely be “retained within the local area”.

But Richard Grant, pictured right top, who employs 48 people at the site and has been there 25 years, argued many jobs depended on it.

He said city council officers had not given any reassurance about where businesses could go at a recent meeting and he has not found anything suitable so far.

Although Mr Grant, who owns Wessex Demolition and Salvage Ltd, said “horrified” business owners, all tenants, had objected to the demolition and called for fewer houses.

“On the trading estate they could only build 100 homes,” said Mr Grant.

“We believe they should sacrifice some of the homes to keep the trading estate going because 300 are employed.

“Some of the businesses have said ‘if we have to go that’s me finished’.”

Andy Lamb, pictured right bottom, who owns Curbridge Motor Company and has been on the site for 23 years, said the rent was cheap and some of the businesses could not afford to relocate, there would not be room for all of them on other local sites and that he believed some simply would not survive.

“Everybody’s in a really bad position,” he said.

“I don’t think the developers and planning people have taken into consideration the effect.”

A decision is due in June and, if approved, work is expected to start in summer 2016.

A spokesman for the developers said the plans followed extensive public consultation and the site was allocated for housing in the council’s Local Plan detailing future housing for the area and would deliver many community benefits while generating and supporting several thousand jobs.

He said they would work with the local authorities to help businesses.

“It is simply not appropriate to have an industrial estate which generates significant noise, dust and HGV traffic movements at the centre of a new residential neighbourhood where children will play and families will live,” he added.

The landowner of the site could not be contacted for response.