If you feel a sense of déjà vu about this do not be surprised. MSDC has been working on this plan for seven years or more. MSDC has had to abandon all its previous attempts to put together a Plan that would pass muster as “sound” - the legal test by which all Local Plans are tested in a public examination process before the Council can adopt them.

This latest version too has a rocky road ahead of it, making its Spring 2016 target adoption date look potentially optimistic. MSDC may well find itself as one of the last Local Planning Authorities in the country to adopt a new Local Plan that would give it back long-needed control over its own planning decisions. And, if it were decided after May’s election that Gatwick should receive an additional runway, the plan proposals could need further major modification.

In one vital respect, this latest public consultation exercise is of limited value. That is because MSDC has yet to publish core information as to how many houses need to be built over the 17 year Plan period to meet demand in a growing local economy, and how and where it would intend to see many of those houses built. MSDC also has yet to tell us whether it intends to accept calls from neighbouring Districts under the so-called “duty to co-operate” rules to provide additional housing to meet their surplus demand, or whether it argue that the District lacks the capacity to build enough houses fully to meet its assessed need given environmental and infrastructure constraints.

One thing is pretty clear: we can forget MSDC’s promise in its 2013 Plan version that the District only needs to build 530 houses p.a. Expect the new plan to set a far higher and more challenging target, adding considerable further pressure on Mid Sussex’s limited available land resources. And the longer this exercise drags on the higher that target is likely to grow.

These are all politically sensitive issues, all the more so with general and local elections looming. We will be pressing for full information to be out in the public domain well ahead of May’s elections.

So much for what isn’t (yet) in the Plan. What about what is there? And what do we at the Campaign to Protect Rural England make of it given that, as the Plan rightly recognises, beyond its 3 main towns Mid Sussex is a largely rural District?

Where, we ask, are the policies that will ensure the sustainable long term future of our characteristic countryside and our rural communities? When it comes to this, the planners’ vision has gone missing. The Plan does not go anything like far enough to safeguard our rural heritage and landscape, or to promote economic opportunities for our smaller towns and villages.

So CPRE has called on MSDC to incorporate into its Plan a specific policy that recognises the value and key on-going role of the rural parts of the District: the economic contribution that rural industries and businesses can make to the District’s prosperity, the countryside’s social value in fostering the well-being of residents and visitors alike; and its vital environmental value as glorious high quality landscape with special biodiversity. The policy should implement the main conclusion of a Capacity Study commissioned by MSDC last year that rural parts of the District have no capacity to absorb anything more than small scale new development. All decisions involving development proposals outside built-up areas should be assessed against this overarching new policy.

Without a core policy of this kind the Plan offers no assurance that Mid Sussex won’t become increasingly urbanised, with no context in which rural planning applications can be assessed. Our proposed policy would also serve to help rule out grandiose, but unsustainable development schemes in our countryside such as the Mayfields 10,000 home proposal.

Whilst large scale rural development in Mid Sussex is plainly unsustainable, a more vigorous policy is needed to encourage the building of more homes in small scale developments in our villages, homes that are affordable to younger local people to meet self evident need and to maintain the vibrancy of those communities.

We also call for more rigorous protection from development than the Plan offers for Ashdown Forest and especially for the two special EU-designated sites within it.

Whilst we welcome the principle behind a number of other proposed countryside policies, CPRE has suggested improvements that would embed long term sustainability into the Plan, and increase MSDC’s accountability for its performance.

In the past, public consultation exercises by MSDC have largely failed to influence its thinking. We can only hope that, given past history, it will now be more open to fresh ideas. All of us who recognise just how special a place we are blessed to live in will be anxious to press MSDC to use this opportunity to get their Plan right. If we are to remain in the top 20 most desirable Districts to live in the Plan must be made to work harder.

Michael Brown, Trustee, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Sussex Branch CIO.