Following the public consultation on Arun’s Draft new local plan during August-September 2012, a special meeting of the full Council on 29th May 2013 was expected to approve the Pre-Submission plan for final public consultation that summer, but instead resulted in Councillors demanding several changes that included reconsideration of strategic housing sites and reassessment of the supporting evidence of the Strategic Housing Market Assessment. As a result of the ensuing delay, the Publication version of the new local plan was approved by full Council on 11th February 2014 but omitted key sections on Spatial Portrait, Housing Allocations, Transport, Employment & Enterprise, Monitoring and Implementation, which were only finally agreed by full Council on 30th April. Its key policies having thus only recently been agreed, the Pre-Submission local plan has yet to be time- tabled for final public consultation, but the Council’s website states that ‘The Publication version of the Local Plan is now considered a material consideration by Arun in assessing planning applications’. The Pre-Submission local plan identifies an annual housebuilding requirement of 580 units (slightly higher than the SEP requirement of 565), supported by a housing land supply bolstered by ‘strategic allocations’ at Barnham-Eastergate-Westergate (2,000 units), Littlehampton’s West Bank (1,000 units) and Angmering (600 units), with 1100 units to be accommodated in other parishes across the District.

In line with its emerging local plan, Arun has this May approved three long-standing applications for a total of 370 units on land identified as part of the ‘strategic allocation’ at Angmering, having earlier this year allowed small-scale housing developments beyond existing settlement boundaries at Brooks Nursery, Barnham (40 units), and adjacent to Fellows Gardens, Yapton (34 units). These approvals followed Officer recommendations that refusals risked being overturned on appeal on the grounds that the District has consistently failed to achieve SEP-required levels of housebuilding, though the fact that the developers don’t always win using this argument – as where the consideration is outweighed by locational factors - is illustrated by the dismissal late last year of appeals concerning The Lillies Caravan Park, Barnham, and land off Woodgate Road, Westergate. The Authority has consequently refused permission for much larger ‘greenfield’ housing developments at Nyton Road, Aldingbourne (268 units), and east of Church Lane, Yapton (250 units), against which refusals the developers concerned - one a local landowner - have predictably lodged appeals, the inquiries into each being scheduled for later this summer.

One planning area where the housing land-supply argument does not apply concerns solar energy, where it is disappointing that Arun saw fit to conditionally approve two applications for solar ‘farms’ between Yapton and Middleton (one covering 36 hectares), while another is industrial development, where it is equally disappointing that Arun followed the NPPF demand to prioritise local economic growth by approving a 30-foot high industrial building at The Vinery, Poling - an otherwise rural location just across the A27 from the South Downs National Park. A third area concerns leisure-related development, in which regard a proposal to construct a 75-lodge holiday complex in Houghton Forest - within the South Downs National Park itself (north of Arundel) - received some radio news coverage in April, but will not be considered until its proponents submit an Environmental Impact Assessment.

Peter Carder May 2014