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
Threats to the landscape and the sustainable development of Arun remain as the Local Plan continues to emerge. The review of the Strategic Housing figures undertaken by Arun will be available from early November but would appear to continue to indicate high housing numbers. However without the evidence base and statistical limits of confidence to back up the argument it is difficult to see that this amounts to anything more than holding ones finger up to the wind.
The principle focus within the District remains on the evolving Local Plan, which is now running six months behind the original schedule. The second phase of public consultation into Arun’s draft Local Plan will now take place in the late spring of 2013 due to the number of responses received during the first phase. Critical features of the Plan include Economy, Housing and Transport. Local MP Nick Herbert has been actively involved in the debate in highlighting the deficiencies of the current process, in particular the fact that the Plan making process has been put ahead of an effective assessment of infrastructure capacity and sustainability. There is an urgent need to look at capacity, sustainability and infrastructure across a larger geographical area to take account of the overall scale and impact of potential development and reflect that in responses to the Plan.
Arun District Draft Local Plan
As previously predicted, Arun DC unveiled in July for public consultation its draft new Local Plan, setting out NPPF-compliant planning policies for Arun District over the next sixteen years.
Although the draft claims to protect “our much valued landscape including the coastal plains...and the land between existing settlements” (para. 1.3), it concedes that Arun is legally bound to plan for the housing targets in the still-unrevoked South East Plan and therefore takes into account both ADC's “preferred” target of an average 400 new units a year and the SEP average of 565 a year.
In order to satisfy the higher SEP target, the draft therefore identifies the three villages of Barnham, Eastergate and Westergate “with their local services and the vastness of undesignated space between them” (para. 4.9) as an area that is a “particularly sustainable location” for additional housing growth - and consequently a “strategic allocation” of 1700 or more new homes (Policy SP8).
Subject to improvements to the A259, Angmering is also named as a “strategic growth location” for up to 1030 new homes, while other parishes in the District are expected to accommodate at least 1120 new units - though rather surpisingly almost none are allocated to the parishes covered by the abortive Ford eco-town (Policy SP8). Since further consultation on the draft Plan is promised over the winter, it remains to be seen whether these allocations are final.
April 2012
As part of its Local Plan preparation process, Arun DC has over the winter been consulting its parish and town councils on the ‘provisional spatial distribution’ of new housing in the District, and also its statutory consultees on the policy content of the new Plan, with final public consultation scheduled from July.
