If you receive a telephone call from a male or female with a pleasant approach about your welfare and home insulation please do not engage in conversation about you, your home and offers they may wish to engage you in. If you are fortunate enough to get the details of company name or that of the person making the call, please let us know. Please also check 1471 to see if there is a number they have called from.

Mick Cogger
Crime Prevention Officer/ALO
Chichester Police Station
West Downs Division
Kingsham Road
Chichester
West Sussex PO19 8AD

Tel: 0845 60 70 999 ext 80213
Direct Dial: 01243 520218
Fax:01243 520207
www.sussex.police.uk

The next few months will decide what level of development will take place in East Grinstead and the surrounding villages, and to what standards such development will be built. This is our last real opportunity to influence the outcome.

The current state of play

When the PRC was originally formed with your backing and that of the other member associations, East Grinstead was faced with the twin dangers of 5,000+ new houses in the town and an ineffective 'Relief' Road through the High Weald ANOB that would generate traffic across Ashdown Forest and swamp the villages with cars. Outrageously, residents were told by the Town, District & County Councils that they wanted the mass-development plans - even after the Referendum in June 2003 where 96.3% of voters rejected the scheme. The PRC's mandate was established against that background to ensure that the views of residents would not be brushed aside by politicians or officials.

Since then the PRC has fought a long, but partially successful, war of attrition with the planning officials at Mid Sussex District Council and West Sussex County Council.

With the help of our professional planning, transport and legal advisors - and the strong mandate provided by residents widespread and repeatedly expressed opposition to the Council's plans (not least the record 6,800 objections to the EGAAP 2006 consultation) - we have seen off for the foreseeable future the threat of a 2,500 home housing estate at Imberhorne Lane and a relief road that would bring no traffic relief. Working with the Town Council, we have developed alternative proposals for the town that would see it reinvigorated, but that would respect its historic market town character and recognise the limitations imposed by its poor road network.

But the story does not end there. As most of you will already be well aware, Mid Sussex District Council will soon be finalising its Core Strategy document for the District and putting that document out for public consultation. The Plans will then be presented to an independent planning inspector who will assess whether that Core Strategy is sound and should be adopted. This Examination in Public, or EiP, as it is known, provides everyone with an opportunity to challenge before the independent inspector the soundness of the Council's proposals and the evidence base that supports those plans. There are government-set criteria by which the soundness of such plans are assessed by the Inspector, whose findings are conclusive. If the plans go unchallenged the Inspector is liable to consider them sound.

Mid Sussex Council has published a timetable for this process (although the timetable has been constantly slipping). As matters stand, the Council is due to approve their Core Strategy in January and issue it quickly thereafter for 6 weeks public consultation. The EiP would be held next October and the Core Strategy would take effect in June 2010, subject to the Inspectors recommendations.

Your Management Committee anticipates that the Core Strategy is likely to propose plans for East Grinstead that will not be sound and that the majority of concerned residents will continue to find objectionable.

MSDC is perpetuating the same mistake that has dogged its past failed planning proposals: as before, it wants to determine the number of houses that it will allow to be built in and around East Grinstead before it has assembled the evidence as to the number of homes that the town can sustain; and the number it appears to have in mind (over 2,600, though the exact number is difficult to pin down) is far more than the traffic experts instructed by West Sussex County Council and East Grinstead Town Council consider acceptable from a traffic congestion standpoint. Moreover MSDC still seems determined to include a (smaller) strategic development along Imberhorne Lane within its Core Strategy plan despite all the opposition and evidence against it, and is still in contact with the developers who hold options over the strategic development sites.

We are also disturbed at the fact that the District Council still has no strategy to deliver economic growth and local jobs for the 3,000 or so additional residents of working age, meaning that their plans will still turn East Grinstead into a commuter satellite of Crawley.

No less worrying is their intention to relegate much of the crucial detail of their plans for East Grinstead into a subsequent Supplemental Planning Document (SPD). This document is not subject to any independent public inspection process, and its soundness is therefore not subject to challenge. The Council Leadership will be free to self-certify it. We have no timetable for the publication of this SPD.

PRC's mandate

For this reason the Management Committee is particularly keen to secure a reaffirmation of its mandate to represent your association in arguing a united case for a better vision for the town and its surrounding villages.

At the Board meeting we will report in more detail our activities during the last year or so, and explain what we believe needs to be done during 2010. It is likely to be quite a daunting period, and one during which we will need all the support and help from our board, membership and core supporters that we can muster.

Our objectives remain the same - a sustainable alternative plan for developing East Grinstead over the next 20 years, one that meets the needs of the town and does not devastate the surrounding villages and environment.

The PRC vision (PDF)