Where did the water go?

Fantastic article in the County Times by Andrew Bardot, Southwater resident.

Protect our communities

Water Neutrality, a term unheard of before 2021, is a fundamental fact of life impacting on every resident within Sussex North Water Resource Zone (SNWRZ), extending from Crawley through Horsham, Billingshurst, Pulborough and to Chichester.

And this week we had a very stark reminder of the real scale of the problems faced by all the local districts when the water supply is turned off within the SNWRZ.

The plain and simple face is that there has been and continues to be maasive over development in West Sussex, largely driven by three factors:

(i) by a misguided government desire to stimulate uneeeded growth in the South East rather than in other regions of the country which need and would benefit from economic and social growth.

(ii) by the housebuilding sector, a major-donor to the political parties and which generates huge profits from building in the south east.

(iii) by the speculative land owners/investors who acquire viable rural land and seek to generate huge profits from selling this for development.

The SNWRZ is already the most water stressed region in the country. SRS has said it many times, our district does not need and cannot sustain this development.

We challenged the Tory plans in their draft updated District plan to licence further large scale development around Southwater, they listened and withdrew their plan.

It remains to be seen how their recently elected Lib Dem successors, who in their pre campaign encouragingly openly attacked the Tory housing plan and vowed to protect green spaces, will tackle this vital challenge.

Our communities look to and place trust in our newly elected representatives to recognise the rapid destruction of our district through over-development and to act decisively to protect the future of our communities.

Andrew Bardot, Save Rural Southwater.

Two Mile Ash road, Southwater

New Liberal Democrat-led Council: same old Tory Plan?

Less than a week after the local elections on 4th May, worrying reports emerged about what the Liberal Democrats intend to do regarding planning issues. Chris Henson (who stood for Labour, Billingshurst) posted on Facebook an account of a conversation he had with John Milne (Chair of the Planning Committee at the new Liberal Democrat-led Horsham District Council and Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate aiming to replace Jeremy Quin at the next general election).

Here is what Chris Henson posted:

“John Milne who has been given the responsibility within the new council to implement a District Plan for HDC (and is the proposed Lib Dem candidate for the future GE) said to me at the count last Thursday they would adopt the plan the previous council refused to put before the electorate with a few minor alterations within the next 6 months.

He said the views of the parish councils that had written their local plans and had them agreed by their residents (Billingshurst 2021 75%) were irrelevant and implied they would be ignored.”

Save Rural Southwater asked John Milne to respond to this extremely worrying claim. John Milne responded: “What Chris says is untrue. I met Chris for the first time at the count and we had a friendly conversation. At that stage, the result hadn't been declared so I didn't even know who would end up running the council. To be clear: our intentions with regards to the Local Plan today are exactly as stated during the election. That is, to minimise our district housing target; and within that, to maximise affordability and eco building standards. The new Cabinet hasn't been appointed yet and no conversations have been had with HDC planning officers.”

This may not reassure voters in Southwater and surrounding villages who expect the new Liberal Democrats to respect the wishes of local people as expressed in the Southwater Neighbourhood Plan. After decades of over-development, Southwater has voted for political change. The Lib Dems campaigned locally to protect the environment and our green spaces. Five Liberal Democrats stood with Save Rural Southwater at our photo-call on 4 March 2023, two months before the election. You can spot the yellow badges in the photo here...

Save Rural Southwater looks forward to working with our new Councillors to ensure Southwater is protected from further over-development. It would be unconscionable if the Liberal Democrats were to reintroduce a discredited and outdated Conservative Local Plan, with just a few tweaks. There is a lot at stake here for our district and our village. John Milne is the Liberal Democrat candidate for Horsham at the next general election, aiming to oust Jeremy Quin. So trust, integrity and accountability is at stake.

Councillor Alex Jeffery wrote in response: ‘I will reiterate for the purposes of reassuring residents that the Lib Dems have no intention of going back on what we campaigned on, and I will certainly not avoid scrutiny by deleting comments that do not suit my narrative. Accountability is key in order to keep the trust, and I and my fellow councillors are prepared to have our feet held to the fire and be held accountable for our actions, that I can assure you of.’

Save Rural Southwater will indeed hold our councillors to account over the coming weeks and months.

Local elections

Be sure to use your vote on Thursday 4th May to elect the new Horsham District Council.

What is your experience of HDC? Has it acted in accordance with the interests of the Southwater electorate? What are our candidates promising and how likely is it they can deliver on their promises?

Many of the councillors standing for election for Southwater North and Southwater South have made commitments in their campaign literature and social media. They have promised to honour the Southwater Neighbourhood Plan; oppose further mass development; and defend the Built Up Area Boundary.

Save Rural Southwater will scrutinise what happens after the election, to see that their actions are consistent with their promises when they start to work again on the latest version of the Local District Plan which runs to 2039.

The people of Southwater are overwhelmingly opposed to our village being a building site for the next twenty years, losing more farmland and countryside amenity, all to generate hundreds of millions in profits for Berkeley Homes, Aubrey-Fletcher Trust and Christ’s Hospital School.

We will be following the new HDC closely from 4th May onwards.