It is valued now more than ever

The letter in last week’s County Times from Peter Burgess (who resigned from his cabinet duties as representative of Horsham recently, leaving the townspeople with no representative on the cabinet), seems to suggest that because, during a 90 minutes’ walk on a cold, wet January day, he saw only a few people and the golfers had probably gone wild swimming or something…there is justification for building on Rookwood.

He says the ‘golfers make their views very plain if they see you’. Yes indeed, (and nothing personal, Mr Burgess) but in my many years of walking there, they have always made me feel part of the broad community of good people who use this publicly owned land.

It’s disappointing that he has not looked at the petition as it has been readily accessible on the excellent Keep Rookwood Green Alliance (KRGA) website for almost a year, along with a huge and growing resource of information, all of which it would benefit the councillors to read before making their decision.

The volunteer community of KRGA have kindly done a lot of the hard work for them, in collating and distilling a huge amount of the publicly available information.

Mr Burgess says: ‘We have a public asset that is only available to a few on payment and more importantly not available to those on reduced incomes etc.’ The charges for golf are minimal at £5 per round for three to four hours of play for season ticket holders, far cheaper (and healthier) than a trip to the cinema, so even those etcetera’s are able to play!

Mr Burgess says: ‘… we would have to stop doing all those nice things that make life in Horsham pleasant… If it was free, I would have different views.”

That’s great news, because in fact the reality is that this space is freely and willingly and respectfully shared by all members of the community, whether they are deemed to be stakeholders or not!

It is a nice thing, valued more than ever before. Implied is that chaos will ensue if we don’t build on Rookwood - but there are three larger sites in the district which have been already deemed suitable. Are they all included in the Local Plan? It seems not.

The main argument for building on Rookwood is merely financial and there’s a lot more to the economy than finance as was ably explained in this publication’s Sussex Green Living column last week.

In the meantime, HDC want to cut off a tiny but crucial lifeline to nature which is already providing an annual income of £80,000.

LUKE BERRY Wickhurst Lane Broadbridge Heath