As regards major individual planning applications n which I have involved the branch:

CPRE objected in February to a large scale housing development proposal on a site rejected as unsuitable and unneeded for local housing in the Lindfield neighbourhood plan that had been adopted in January 2016.  MSDC rejected the application in April, overruling a recommendation by its planning officers.  That decision has now been appealed - with an April 2017 hearing date!  The gap between Lindfield and Haywards Heath has been particularly heavily targeted by would be developers, and the village of Lindfield (whose central street is a conservation area) has borne a wholly disproportionate amount of new greenfield development on its southern fringes – an unfair consequence of MSDC’s continuing inability to secure a new District Plan with an achievable housing growth target.

Linden Homes’ appeal against the refusal of permission to build 200 houses just outside East Grinstead has been set down for hearing in October 2016.  In CPRESx’s name I am working with an individual rule 6 objector to this scheme (CPRESx is not a rule 6 party) to maximise the arguments against allowing this appeal, and am scheduled to meet the objector and his QC in London next Monday.  Key grounds for objection involving Habitats Regulations compliance, heritage asset protection and severe cumulative traffic impact are not being taken up by MSDC.

The disputed fight between Gleeson Homes and local residents (supported by CPRESx) over a proposal to develop within the local gap between Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint is now in its 3rd year, with numerous twists and turns that would take pages to explain.  MSDC has been shamefully supine over fighting to protect that local gap or to recognise the significance of Hassocks’s now well developed neighbourhood plan (with which Gleesons’ proposal is incompatible).

An appeal against a refusal of permission to build 175 homes on the outskirts of Copthorne has been rejected, principally on grounds of the location’s remoteness from needed services.

CPRESx has also been active in opposing an application by the Church of Scientology to secure automatic permitted development  right to convert a 3 ha field within he High Weald AONB (a field that hey do not even own) into an overflow car park for their East Grinstead headquarters.  Their claim is based on a claim that they have used the field continuously for this purpose for the last 10 years without dispute.   Local residents’ evidence and historic Google Maps challenge that assertion.  CPRESx also challenges MSDC’s assumption that the planning merits of a change of use of land within an AONB cannot be considered, and has called on MSDC to require the applicant to reinstate the filed that they have pre-emptively dug up.  MSDC has now spent 4 months taking legal advice on CPRESx’s submissions.