Thank you to all who joined us in the wonderful Council Chamber at Littlehampton Town Hall. We were delighted to see so many people willing to turn out on such a cold night who share our concerns about the mounting threats to Arun’s precious countryside, villages and towns. We were delighted to welcome Tony Whitbread from the Sussex Wildlife Trust and discovered so much about the uniqueness and wonder of the Arun Valley, its flora and fauna.

Measures to promote the better use of urban land, particularly high quality high density development, while committing to continued Green Belt protection, mean CPRE gives a cautious welcome to today’s Budget.

Adur District has grown increasingly popular for residents moving from Brighton and London, with Shoreham Beach sometime referred to as ‘a new Sand Banks’ with its grandiose and occasionally prize winning homes replacing old railway carriage based bungalows.

The Brighton & Hove Local CPRE Group was reformed in the autumn of 2016, having been dormant for few years. Since then four meetings have been held in the Old Ship Hotel on Brighton seafront. 

CPRE Sussex has submitted comments as part of the South Downs Local Plan Pre-submission Consultation.

A report out today names a mass housing development in Sussex as the largest in the country to be approved in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

Chichester District has seen a number of issues relating to housing and infrastructure over the past year.

CPRE Sussex attended and spoke at the Examination in Public (EiP) of the new Arun Local Plan in September 2017. We expressed concerns about the lack of consultation, the level of housing proposed and the impact this would have on the local environment and the lack of a coherent strategy for ensuring that infrastructure is put in place at the right time to accommodate this development.

The year 2016 closed with housing developers taking full advantage of Wealden District Council’s perceived lack of 5 year housing land supply. Virtually weekly during 2016, green fields (including within High Weald AONB) were being lost to speculative housing developer applications. CPRE and SWOT (Save Wealden from Overdevelopment Team) were kept busy trying to fend off these applications with robust objections and by attending the Council’s Planning Meetings. However, the Planning Meeting Councillors were often instructed not to object to an application by a developer in case the refusal of the application put the Council into ‘Cost Territory’ should a developer appeal be then forthcoming.

CPRE Sussex is making a formal objection to the ‘mathematical trickery’ behind a new government paper which argues that the majority of new house building should be concentrated in the South-East of England.