8 November 2013
A major article in the Daily Mirror (7 November 2013) by investigative journalist Andrew Penman has launched a scathing attack on the motives behind the proposed Mayfield new town development in Sussex, following the public meeting held jointly by CPRE Sussex and Locals Against Mayfields Sprawl.
Questioning the sustainability of a development on land prone to flooding, without decent transport access, Penman writes: "This is a story about a beautiful stretch of the South Downs that a company would like to bury under a 10,000-house new town, making a fortune in the process."
6 November 2013
The high profile seminar held jointly by GACC, CPRE Surrey and CPRE Sussex on Friday 25 October voiced local and national concern about the prospect of a new runway at Gatwick Airport. Attended by over thirty local councillors, all the major parties, four MPs and one MEP, the seminar concluded with the Chair tabling a resolution that, “Those here would oppose any new runway at LGW”, which was passed by a show of hands with a large majority.
1 November 2013
At a packed public meeting on 18 October held jointly by CPRE Sussex and Locals Against Mayfield Building Sprawl, local MPs lambasted the plan to build 10,000 new homes on land between Henfield and Sayers Common.
Nick Herbert MP for Arundel and South Downs said, “This new town proposal is a con, not wanted by the parish council or district council.”
Nicholas Soames, MP for Mid Sussex, joined CPRE Sussex's Roger Smith and Georgia Wrighton in declaring it to be “an appalling, opportunistic proposal.”
Read a full account of the meeting in our Mayfield campaign section
New agricultural buildings law will "destroy the character of rural areas"
Written by William ShawCPRE Sussex Director Georgia Wrighton has responded to proposed new government planning rules announced by Nicholas Boles which will make it easier for developers to transform unused transform agricultural buildings into homes. In a response to the Department for Communities and Local Government she wrote:
On 16 October hundreds of people protested the plan for a new town of 10,000 homes in the Sussex countryside, tying a seven-mile-long yellow ribbon around the 1,000-acre site of the proposed Mayfield new town.
Government to remove obligation to notify landowners above fracking sites?
Written by CPRE Sussex
16 October 2013
Georgia Wrighton, Director of CPRE Sussex responded on Monday to a Department of Communities and Local Government consultation which proposes to remove the requirement to notify landowners above fracking/shale gas drilling activities going on underground beneath their properties.
The new proposed standard application form will fail to "consider the complex and far-reaching impacts of unconventional oil and gas exploration and extraction, and attempts to ignore real concerns in the countryside about the impacts on local people and the environment," says Wrighton.
Read the full response here in our Fracking campaigns section.
