Fury as housing target threatens Pooh’s forest

ASSISTANT POLITICAL EDITOR A TORY revolt has broken out after a council was ordered to build thousands of extra homes despite fears it will damage the forest that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh.

Mid Sussex District Council was this week told by the Planning Inspectorate to build almost 4,000 more houses in the next 15 years.

Officials had warned that protected countryside including an area around Ashdown Forest, the fictional home of Pooh, would bear the brunt of the new developments. But the Government-backed inspectorate dismissed the concerns and insisted on the higher housing target because of a growing local population.

Tory MPs are now demanding the decision is overturned as they dubbed the higher targets “absurd” and “horrific”.

Government ministers are also in the firing line because just weeks ago they said the countryside would not bear the brunt of a new housebuilding drive.

Campaigners fear the decision – the first of its kind since the Government’s White Paper on housing was published – sets a worrying precedent. Sir Nicholas Soames,

the Tory MP and grandson of Sir Winston Churchill who represents the area, said: “For 33 years I have seen the mounting pressure to concrete over our countryside. This is too much to sustain and we cannot tolerate it.”

Nick Herbert, the former Tory justice minister, said planning officials had gone “off the rails”.

“The inspector has arrived at an absurdly high housing number,” he said.

Councils can set their own housing plans based on the needs of the local population. However, the inspectorate can intervene to demand changes.

Setting out their targets for 2014-2031, Mid Sussex had proposed building 800 houses a year – working out at 13,600 in total.

But the inspectorate has demanded that the council targets 1,026 new houses a year.

The decision has infuriated local campaigners who fear the local Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty will be damaged.

In particular, officials estimate almost 1,400 houses will have to be built in a fourmile protective ring around Ashdown Forest.

AA Milne, who wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh series, used to take his son Christopher Robin walking through the forest.

Today special maps of the area direct tourists to “Heffalump Trap”, and “Eeyore’s Gloomy Place”. Sources in the inspectorate stressed that the ruling was only an “interim” decision and that dialogue with Mid Sussex continued.