Priority should be our wellbeing

Last week I read the heartfelt and well researched letters published in the WSCT calling for the leadership of Horsham District Council to think again about the proposals to develop the Rookwood site for housing. Why do I remain despondent?

Well, as far back as October 2016 HDC kicked off, apparently in some secrecy (but now revealed under Freedom of Information request 4726), a project to deliver ‘the land for residential development’ with ‘a planning allocation that maximises the

potential capital receipt for the council’.

The initial brief reveals (surprise, surprise) that it’s all about money, with absolutely no reference to the need for green space for the health of the community or preservation of wildlife, and with the adjacent Warnham Nature Reserve being simply dismissed as ‘an obstacle to overcome’.

No doubt the Covid hit to HDC’s finances will be peddled as an excuse to develop this site with HDC expecting us to be grateful for its alternative proposal to just develop the southern part of the site with approaching 800 homes (actually not much reduced from the original 1,000).

Of these, some 25 per cent (around 200) would then be expected to be affordable/ social rented homes which are desperately needed by those on housing registers awaiting suitable accommodation.

But hold on a minute, do you recall the North of Horsham strategic site where HDC agreed to a massive shortfall in the provision of Affordable Housing?

On that site HDC ‘mysteriously’ accepted the provision of 200 private rented sector (PRS) homes, in lieu of the equivalent number of affordable rented homes, despite being in blatant conflict with adopted Local Plan policies. (Look for yourself at www.

thegreenkilnwoodvale.com to see what PRS homes are like – very nice but expensive, eh?)

So, when HDC plays the ‘affordable housing card’, in justification for concreting over Rookwood, remember that it’s directly attributable to its failure to secure the policy compliant level of such homes at North of Horsham by accepting PRS homes in lieu.

With the developer’s profit margin on PRS homes at 20 per cent compared to six per cent on affordable rented, this has not only ‘gifted’ the developer an extra £8m but failed those in most essential housing need.

Turning to finance, HDC is projecting a loss of £1.8m in the current year, ascribed to Covid.

But, on March 31, 2020, HDC had a very healthy £15.66m in general reserves. So what’s the problem? If reserves aren’t to be used for a pandemic, then just what are they to be used for? HDC, please don’t proffer this as an excuse to sell the family silver (Rookwood), or should I say ‘the lungs of Horsham’.

Money festering in the bank should not be HDC’s priority whereas the wellbeing of its residents should. To coin a recently used (political) phrase, maybe HDC needs to come ‘under new management’? PAULKORNYCKY CoxGreen, Rudgwick