Housing need is going up not down
This comes amidst calls to reduce our housing target
Housing need in Mid Sussex is going up not down, new figures show, in an apparent blow to attempts to reduce the district’s future targets.
Back in January, a draft district plan was published allocating thousands of new homes with major strategic sites proposed at Ansty, west of Burgess Hill and Sayers Common.
But after a furious backlash the Conservative-controlled district council decided to ‘press the pause button’.
This was so they could go back to Michael Gove and ask him to reduce Mid Sussex’s housing target. These arguments will not be aided by the fact that the district’s housing need, which informs its target, is still on the rise.
updating their local plans will need to take them into account, meaning many areas face the prospect of more homes having to be planned for.
CPRE trustee Roger Smith said: “With the exception of three Sussex councils so far, housing targets, which are already huge, unprecedented and unsustainable, have been increased.
“The present reckless presson regardless-never-mindthe-consequences approach to planning must stop.
“What is needed urgently now and for the future is planning that is empirical and pragmatic, and community led.”
The Middy and its sister titles which form part of SussexWorld, which is campaigning against unsustainable housing targets across the county, asked all Sussex councils to confirm how their housing targets had changed.
The new data meant increases in Arun, Worthing, Crawley, Horsham, Mid
Sussex, Eastbourne, Wealden and Lewes – although the latter had only risen by one home per year.
Worthing Borough Council pointed out that figures used at the point of submission of a local plan were valid for two years, so its new number would not yet come into play.
Hastings’ annual need has decreased and Chichester District Council and Adur District Council confirmed that their figures were unchanged.
Numbers have yet to be confirmed for Rother and Brighton and Hove.
Mr Smith added: “The government’s hocus-pocus formula takes no account of the resulting environmental consequences, including impact on the supply of potable water, increased outflows of raw and partially treated sewage into rivers and sea, and the loss of farmland needed for food production and carbon sequestration, and climate change.”