FOLLOWING your report “Councillors turn down controversial flats bid” (Gazette, March 8), I would like to comment on the same.
In the first instance the plan allowed for five two-bedroom flats and one three-bedroom flat (eight units), not five two-bedroom and three one-bedroom flats (eight units), as in your report.
On the issue of vehicle pollution, I think that the committee should look to the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) and the stringent emissions control procedures in place for both cars and HGVs. The committee would find that the agreed levels of pollution are not “seasonal” and therefore whether a lorry engine is started in winter or summer, the pollution would be the same.
Furthermore, these dwellings would be no closer to the Verdant depot than the existing dwellings to the north. The “lumbering” lorries referred to must be the same that “lumber” down Clun Road, an area of Littlehampton that has the largest population of children under the age of 10.
Now when it comes to the “loss of a commercial site” I wonder when the committee members last visited Lineside Industrial Estate, where they would find a third of all industrial units vacant with little or no prospect of occupancy in the foreseeable future.
Finally, people may prefer to live in a house rather than a flat, but I am sure that first-time buyers would be happy just to get on the housing ladder, a near impossible task in the current climate with the huge deposits required. And if there is no demand for flats, why are there hundreds proposed, and I am sure will be built, in the Courtwick and North Littlehampton proposals?
The planning application report, ref LU/343/11, after extensive negotiations with the planning officer relating to sustainability, numbers and design, recommended granting permission for this development, only for it to be turned down by the Arun’s development control committee for the somewhat ambiguous reasons listed above!
Terry Mills
Lyminster Road
Littlehampton
Comments