Monday 16 December 2013

Media release: Durand Academy’s plans to build new state boarding school ‘inappropriate’ in the South Downs National Park

Local campaigners, led by Campaign to Protect Rural England (Sussex) Trustee, Anne Reynolds, were successful in their bid to halt the controversial application to build a 375 pupil boarding school which was turned down at last Thursday’s South Downs National Park Authority planning committee meeting.

In an adjournment debate yesterday Westminster Hall today Nicholas Soames MP appealed to the Secretary of State for Planning to ensure that unsupported plans like those put forward by Mayfield Market Towns in Sussex should not be allowed. He said that “Even the most zealous supporter of the scheme could not call it sustainable.” He called the developers' plans “Grotesque and wholly unwanted".

Mr Soames had called the debate jointly with MP for Arundel and South Downs, Nick Herbert, who pointed out that Mayfield had blighted the area and was now having a marked effect of local house prices.

The developers propose to build 10,000 homes in the countryside between Henfield and Sayers Common.

Read more in our Mid Sussex District News section

29 November 2013

Nicholas Soames, Member of Parliament for Mid Sussex, has secured an Adjournment Debate in the Westminster Hall on the ‘Proposed Mayfield new town in West Sussex’ on Tuesday, 3rd December 

More details here.

29 November 2013

Nicholas Soames, Member of Parliament for Mid Sussex, has secured an Adjournment Debate in Westminster Hall on the ‘Proposed Mayfield new town in West Sussex’ on Tuesday, 3rd December.

Mr Soames’s Parliamentary neighbour, Nick Herbert, Member of Parliament for Arundel and South Downs, will be contributing to the debate and the Planning Minister, Nick Boles MP, will respond.

The debate will take place in Westminster Hall on Tuesday, 3rd December at 1100-1130.

29 November 2013

Yesterday's Lancing Herald featured an article on CPRE Sussex's call for Adur Council to rethink their plans to allow house building on sensitive sites across Lancing and Sompting.

CPRE Sussex has called on the council to re-examine plans for development at New Monks Farm, West Sompting and Shoreham Airport, which would destroy the character of the greenfleld areas, and spoil historic countryside views.

David Johnson, chairman of CPRE Sussex, told the newspaper, "The Adur Local Plan needs a significant rethink and we hope that the district counci. l will dig deep to flnd brownfield land and unlock sites held onto by developers to demonstrate that  building on greenfleld land in this way is inappropriate and unnecessary."

In a front page article in the same edition, The Lancing Herald also featured the petition supported by local groups, including CPRE Sussex, to persuade the council to rethink their controversial plan to build over 1,000 homes across Lancing and Sompting.

Download a PDF copy of the articles below.

8 November 2013

An article in the Daily Mirror, 7 November 2013 quotes Dr Roger Smith and Georgia Wrighton of CPRE and reopens the debate about a conflict of interest in the board of Mayfield Market Town's board of directors.

8 November 2013

A major article in the Daily Mirror (7 November 2013) by investigative journalist Andrew Penman has launched a scathing attack on the motives behind the proposed Mayfield new town development in Sussex, following the public meeting held jointly by CPRE Sussex and Locals Against Mayfields Sprawl.

Questioning the sustainability of a development on land prone to flooding, without decent transport access, Penman writes: "This is a story about a beautiful stretch of the South Downs that a company would like to bury under a 10,000-house new town, making a fortune in the process."

CPRE Sussex Director Georgia Wrighton has responded to proposed new government planning rules announced by Nicholas Boles which will make it easier for developers  to transform unused transform agricultural buildings into homes. In a response to the Department for Communities and Local Government she wrote:

16 October 2013

Georgia Wrighton, Director of CPRE Sussex has responded to a Department of Communities and Local Government consultation which proposes to remove the requirement to notify landowners above fracking/shale gas drilling activities going on underground beneath their properties. Read the response in full: