When HDC’s Full Council meets to decide Liberty Property Trust’s outline application to build 2,750 houses and a business park on countryside North of Horsham they will doubtless be told that the crucial viability report is of very little consequence and that to ensure the District’s five-year housing land supply they must permit the application, even though it will deliver only 18 per cent affordable homes, instead of the 35 per cent required by the Horsham District Planning Framework (HDPF).

This seems to be the essence of the questionable arguments in support of the application employed by HDC officers and Cllr Vickers(Cabinet Member for Planning and Development) at the meeting of HDC’s Planning Committee, held 28 April (WSCT 4May).

However, it would be a mistake to assume that the District’s five-year housing land supply would be assured, should Councillors permit the Trust’s outline planning application.

After all, house-builders will not deliver more houses than can be sold at an acceptable-to-them profit and they will adjust build rates either up or down in response to market demand.

The House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee (HC CLG) report, ‘Capacity in the homebuilding industry’, published 29Apr17, found that to recover their investment, developers will be more likely ‘to reduce the level of affordable housing delivered and build more slowly to maintain prices’.

And, as is acknowledged in the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts’ report: ‘Housing: State of the Nation,’ also published 24 Apr 17, housing delivery rates are dependent on ‘the health of the wider economy’.

Whether economic growth will be sufficient to sustain current build rates in Horsham District, let alone meet the increased housing targets now being considered by HDC, is uncertain.

And, of course, Councils cannot compel developers to meet 5 year requirements.

As for the withholding of the unredacted viability report, HC CLG’s ‘Capacity in the homebuilding industry’, found that ‘a local authority has no way of assessing whether a developer’s claim that a site has become unviable is true, or a negotiating tactic’. Accordingly, Councillors who wish to see the unredacted viability report for North of Horsham are right to do so. It should also be available for public scrutiny.

Cllr Vickers’s advice to Councillors that they should be ‘jolly grateful’ council officers had negotiated 18 per cent affordable housing’ (WSCT 4May) is flimflam. After all, HDC has allocated a huge area of countryside to Liberty Property Trust and the Trust should provide 35 per cent affordable housing, as stipulated by the HDPF.

This flawed application will not meet as it should the District’s need for affordable homes. It should be refused.

Yours faithfully,


Dr R F Smith
For CPRE Sussex (Horsham District)