A PARTIALLY-sighted Eastleigh woman has made an 11th hour plea to stop hundreds of homes being planted on her allotment.

Tonight Sue Dixon's hopes of keeping hold of her South Street garden plot, which she has lovingly tended for more than six years, could finally be buried.

For Eastleigh councillors will at special meeting be recommending to give the green light to an outline plan to build 432 homes on the town centre allotment site.

With more than 10,000 people currently knocking on the council's door for a home, civic leaders say the land is desperately needed.

The decision to grab allotment land has caused uproar among the close-knit gardening community and has become one of the town's most controversial development issues.

Sue, 47, was among angry allotment holders who have twice marched on the town's civic offices, in the fight to save their plots from the bricks and mortar invasion.

The "green" army rolled wheelbarrows, loaded with protest petitions and thousands of letters of objection, to the entrance of the municipal offices.

Sue is still clinging to the hope that councillors might have a change of heart and lift the development threat which has been hanging over their well-tilled soil.

The council is offering alternative allotment sites but Sue said: "We have a nice little community here and we do not want to move.

"My allotment is only about five minutes away from my home and I only have one road to cross. When I am here I feel safe and I get a lot of support from the other plot holders.

Sue, who has just enough sight to make out the bright colours of the flowers she has grown, says: "They have even put down the straight lines on my allotment so when I sow my seeds they do not go all over the place."

She and fellow allotment holders have already been given notice to quit their plots by the end of next March.

But with the development issue set to be played out at a long-running public inquiry, Sue says the allotments could lie derelict for years. Tonight, in a report, councillors will be told of the deepening housing crisis facing the town if development does not go ahead.

Development control chief Colin Peters says: "There is an urgent need in Eastleigh for more housing, especially affordable homes."

He says this justifies the release of the site in advance of the local plan.