Housing demand must be challenged, not simply fulfilled

I refer to the two feature articles, published in the West Sussex Gazette on October 13 and the West Sussex County Times on October 14, covering the PM’s recent party conference speech in regard to ‘no greenfield development’anditimplications for Sussex (and many similar rural areas).

The newly and curiously renamed Department of Levelling-Up sounds like something straight out of the Daily Telegraph’s satirical Way of the World of Peter Simple column.

In those two reports, I note our own MP is simply quoted as pronouncing: “I look forward to seeing how the forthcoming housing bill will address these pressures. Taken at face value, that doesn’t seem to promise much – apparently merely yet more passive fence-sitting from our incumbent democratic representative.

As one of your other spokesmen implied, unless and until both the national ‘standard method’ and the latest ‘zonal’ planning proposals are dropped in their entirety and replaced with an empirical/ pragmatic, localism-based, communityderived, grass-roots planning process, there will be no real and lasting relief from endless environmentally-destructive mass built development.

If irreplaceable unspoilt countryside is to be protected and reserved for many other crucial human and natural strategic purposes, then surely any such development demand needs to be challenged and reduced at source, not merely accommodated and fulfilled.