Council’s housing policy ‘delayed and paralysed’ say conservation group

Responding to the assertion that ‘Horsham is full’ by two Conservative councillors in last week’s County Times, John Steele, of the Horsham Society, contrasted Horsham District Council’s situation with that of neighbouring Mid Sussex, where they had recently published their draft Local Development Framework.

He explained: “Horsham, on the other hand, still doesn’t have a plan. Instead of engaging with parish councils and local communities, it adopted an arrogant top down approach which unsurprisingly is unlikely to have grass roots support. Consequently, there has been a series of embarrassing delays and policy paralysis.”

He added: “Courted by developers and in fear of local reaction, councillors simply can’t agree how many houses should be built or where; and when they do finally decide it is likely they will make a hash of the task.”

Developers presented various strategic site options for large scale development in the district to HDC in July 2012 and three of those options were 4,500 homes North of Horsham, 1,750 homes east of Billingshurst and 2,750 houses west of Southwater.

Peter Burgess and Christian Mitchell, Conservative councillors for Holbrook West, the ward in which the North of Horsham development might take place, said that substantially increasing the number of houses in and around Horsham town was not an option.