PRC Brief Number 1 for Mid Sussex District Councillors
Monday, 8 January 2007

East Grinstead Area Action Plan  – best location for 4,500 new houses?

1. Consultation. Last summer the Council Leadership’s East Grinstead Area Action Plan went out to public consultation, and drew about 7,000 objections - an all-time record, we understand. The Council Leadership has therefore put the scheme on hold until after the District Council Election in May. As the Election approaches, Councillors will be considering what to tell their electors about their intentions if re-elected.

2. The scheme threatens everyone. We believe Councillors will wish to understand why the scheme has so many objectors and so few supporters. The developers’ scheme for 2,500 houses at East Grinstead, combined with a further 2,000 houses elsewhere in the town, would turn East Grinstead into a dormitory satellite of Crawley. This would not only destroy the character of the District’s foremost historic town. Being 8 miles from the centre of employment, it would also generate a flood of commuter traffic that would inundate the villages in between – Copthorne, Crawley Down, Furnace Wood, Turners Hill and Worth. 

3. Legal issues. You are often told that the scheme is pre-ordained, and that you are powerless to object. You should reject this attempt to shut elected Councillors out of the decision-making process. There are genuine alternative locations for these houses, and you are entitled to reach your own views on what is right. To be sure, you are bound by the County Structure Plan adopted in 2004. But the Structure Plan provides no more than conditional endorsement to the developers’ plans. It lays down essential preconditions which must be met, failing which it requires a review of the development strategy: –
* It is a precondition that the proposed "relief road" must reduce traffic congestion in the East Grinstead significantly below the 2004 level;
* It is a precondition that there must be a high quality transport link to Crawley/Gatwick that offers a realistic and attractive alternative to travel by car. 

4. The choices are for you as a Councillor to make. It is now manifest that these conditions cannot be met, and that the review required by the Structure Plan must therefore be held. Thus whatever you are being told, you are not under any compulsion to connive at the destruction of the District’s foremost historic town. It is for you to decide where you stand, and then to explain your decision to your electors. You are not powerless, but you are accountable.

5. Alternative locations. Where else could these houses be built? 
* recent documents issued by the Planning Department reveal many more brown land and small sites in Mid Sussex than were previously factored into the strategy;
* Government policy requires major housebuilding development to be located close to where employment growth is expected, which in this case means close to Crawley/Gatwick (and not, as some will tell you, in Burgess Hill or Haywards Heath).

6. A combination of these alternative locations would be more sustainable than the present scheme, which threatens to destroy the character both of East Grinstead itself and of the villages to the west of it. Please make clear to your electors that you will support these alternatives.

East Grinstead Post Referendum Campaign 

For further information, call Tony Lane on 01342 323293, www.eghouses.org