Action group seeks to protect land

Residents in a West Sussex village are raising strong objections after council planners earmarked a greenfield site for development.

Horsham District Council has pinpointed an area abutting Smock Alley and Haglands Lane in West Chiltingtonas a potential development site.

The land – said by residents to be a ‘wildlife haven’ – has been earmarked for the building of 15 houses and has been included in the council’s draft local plan along with two other sites in the village.

But the Smock Alley Action Group, representing about 60 households in the village, is protesting.

A spokesman for the group said: “We understand the huge pressure on the council to accommodate the numbers set down by central government but we feel their choice of sites is lazy, developer-led and against their own policies.

“The site has mature trees and hedgerow completely to three sides and mature woodland to the west.

“The adjacent woodland site has a biodiversity action plan for priority species and their habitats. This designation is used to protect species most under threat. Identified on site and adjacent are bats, badgers, dormice, numerous wild birds, slow worms and glow worms.

“The fields and woodland have been undisturbed for more than 50 years and are a wildlife haven.”

The group said there were other sites that were more sustainable and less harmful to the environment.

The spokesman added: “The potential access roads are Smock Alley and Haglands Lane, both of which are very narrow roads and would require widening.

“In addition, it would require significant hedgerow removal.”

The groups said the parish council had twice previously refused inclusion of the land in the neighbourhood plan and it has twice been rejected by Horsham District Council and twice at appeal by the Planning Inspectorate in the last seven years.

The action group spokesman said: “Why are we wasting money on defending appeals to build on greenfield sites, when brownfield are available and allowing the district council to decide the sites for our Neighbourhood Plans that should be community led?

“This is a district-wide problem.”

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