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Key Issues
Southwater Country Park, West Sussex
Photography by John Parsons
The 2023-2040 Lib Dem Horsham District Local Plan does not respect the
current Build Up Area Boundary and the current Southwater
Neighbourhood Plan. The proposed Berkeley Homes development will
mark the beginning of the end of Southwater as a village. This is the worst
possible outcome for the village and it has been imposed against the very
clear wishes of the village by our non-resident District Councillors.
What are the factors that will determine the future of our village?
Horsham District Local Plan
One of the objectives of the periodically updated local district plan prepared,
consulted on and approved by HDC, is to set local housing allocation across the district and to identify land for housing development.
The current (2015) version of the HDLP (introduced by the Conservatives) excluded all the Christ’s Hospital and Aubrey-Fletcher Trust land northwest of the village recently proposed by Berkeley Homes for development thereby protecting the valuable farm and woodland and biodiversity around the village, maintaining settlement separation and mitigating the risk of over-stressing crucial infrastructure in
and around the village, in particular water supply and wastewater treatment, road and transport access, hospital and medical facilities.
The updated version of the plan (2023) introduced by the Lib Dems in 2023 and
currently at the public consultation stage (consultation closed 1st March 2024) massively expands the village boundary to include the Christ’s Hospital and Aubrey-Fletcher land and effectively replicates the 2022 Berkeley Homes 1500 homes site which the village so strongly objected to.
Southwater neighbourhood Plan
Our village is not for sale to developers! The Southwater Neighbourhood Plan is the formal means for our community to control the type, location, size, pace and design of development in our village. Neighbourhood Plans were introduced under the Localism Act 2011 to give new community rights to local residents.
Southwater Parish Council developed this plan at great effort and considerable cost, with the assistance of expert planning consultants. The village was then asked to vote on it. It was approved and adopted in June 2021. It remains current and is presently undergoing a periodic review to keep it up to date.
The SNP quite sensibly acknowledged the need for some further expansion of the village to accommodate reasonable future housing and possible schooling need but envisaged nothing on the scale of the Berkeley Homes proposal.
But the LIB Dems have different ideas for our village – Indeed they have given the pen to Berkeley Homes to once again decide how they and their landowners can maximise their profits from urbanising our village.
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To view the Southwater Neighbourhood Plan, see details here >
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To view maps of Southwater relating to the Southwater Neighbourhood plan, see details here >
Built Up Area Boundary
See Horsham District Council's Local Plan Review – for Built-Up Area Boundaries here >
Built up area boundaries (BUABs) are a planning policy tool used to define areas of the District which are considered to be ‘countryside’. In areas classified as countryside, development will generally be restricted, as set out in Policy 26: Countryside Protection of the Horsham District Planning Framework (HDPF).
Any proposal for development must be essential to its countryside location and support agriculture, forestry or leisure purposes. Within the defined ‘built-up areas’ of the District, the principle of infilling and redevelopment is generally accepted, providing that other matters such as design and the scale of development are agreed.
The HDPF sets out the development hierarchy in Policy 3, which identifies each settlement that has a defined built-up area boundary. In general terms, these are the larger settlements in the district which have a range of services and facilities and are therefore able to absorb some additional growth. Larger settlements are considered to have a greater capacity for growth than smaller villages and hamlets.
Government housing targets
Currently local housing targets are determined by central Government imposing on district planning authorities, in the local case Horsham District Council (HDC), minimum annual house building and development land allocation targets with the overarching objective of building nationally at least 300,000 new homes each year. The government target is partly driven by an assessment of housing need and partly
by a desire to promote national economic growth by encouraging the
housebuilding/property sector.
The current government annual target figure, which is based on outdated population data and growth forecasts is under review. In terms of local targets, there is a common misconception that these are mandatory. They are not, they are advisory but they should be followed unless there are good reasons why they should not apply. In Horsham District, residents have the strongest possible ground for reducing
targets, namely water neutrality. Properly applied and enforced by Local Planning Authorities, which very sadly it is not, this would provide a very strong brake on large scale housing development until the water supply issue has been conclusively resolved.
Levelling up
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill was given Royal Assent on Thursday 26 October and is now an Act of Parliament (law).
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill aims to support the government's commitment to reducing geographical disparities between different parts of the UK by spreading opportunity more equally.
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This means no one area should receive significant overdevelopment, investment and job opportunities over another, creating opportunities for everyone across the UK by: improving jobs, pay and living standards. making streets safer. protecting health and wellbeing. investing in high streets and town centres.
Houses for our community?
Housing crisis? Whose housing crisis?
Watch how Berkeley Homes explain to foreign buyers why they should buy a house in Southwater. They even show where it is on a map of England!
See Berkeley Homes video here >
Proof that mass development of 1,500 more homes is not about meeting local housing needs but is actually creating a new market - pricing local families out of the village. It feeds Berkeley’s profits whilst creating an urban sprawl. Our loss. Their gain £££.
Water neutrality
View our video explaining Water Neutrality here >
In September 2025 Water Neutrality was withdrawn by Natural England.
You can see the link to their Withdrawal Statement here: https://www.southdowns.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Arun-Valley-Withdrawal-Statement-31.10.25.pdf
Water Neutality was introduced in 2021 to specifically address the concerns about water extraction levels at Hardham, the one and only supplier of water to Southwater, and the inevitability of increased water demand from new housing/commercial development across the Sussex North Water Resource Zone (SNWRZ).
Not Enough Water
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We are living in the most over-stressed water supply zone in the country It’s called the Sussex North Water Resource Zone (SNWRZ) and is served by Southern Water (SW). Click here to see the Sussex North Water Resource Zone map, image also to the right.
The area extends from Crawley through Horsham, Pulborough, Arundel to Chichester. This serious problem is largely due to mass housebuilding across our region over recent decades, which massively increased demand on the finite water supply available to be drawn at Hardham, near Pulborough.
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The lack of water supply was recognised by the Government’s Environment Agency (EA) and Natural England (NE) and other stakeholders, including Southern Water and the affected District Councils. So, Natural England developed the policy of “water neutrality” and robustly and unambiguously defined what this means;
“The definition of water neutrality is the use of water in the supply area before the development is the same or lower after the development is in place”
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The withdrawal of this key policy
The withdrawal statement records that the “solution” reached by NE/Environment Agency/SW to enable the lifting of the 2021WN requirement is to reduce annual abstraction from Hardham by just over 20%.
In 2022, post the introduction of water neutrality, JBA Consulting retained by the three Councils (HDC/CBC/CDC) and in consultation with Natural England, The Environment Agency and Southern Water produced a water neutrality Study and mitigation strategy. This revealed that going forward, applying water neutrality and without limiting Hardham extraction as now proposed, there would be an annually incrementally increasing shortfall between water demand and supply over the study period (to 2038/39). See below the JBA table which all the study stakeholders noted above, endorsed.​​
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So now water neutrality no longer applies to new development (the direct impact of which can only be to significantly increase future SNWRZ water demand) and with a 20% plus decrease in the Hardham contribution to this demand, the shortfall between supply and demand can only increase.
The withdrawal of water neutrality flies in the face of the JBA study and conclusions. Save Rural Southwater (SRS) have asked Southern Water and Natrual England for the evidence which underpins this about turn. SRS have also raised this with Andrew Griffiths MP (Arundel - Cons) who advised he is also seeking this evidence. Without doubt this decision was taken as a result of Government pressure - water neutrality was an inconvenient impediment to their Quixotic fantasy of 1.5 m homes - the issue is how do we challenge this?
