Campaigners fighting the proposed eco-town in Ford fear their concerns may have fell on deaf ears when housing minister Caroline Flint paid a visit.
Arun District Council leader Cllr Gill Brown said: "Ms Flint has listened but she didn't hear what we were saying.
"Everybody in the meeting made some valid points. The one point we made was that the council has given planning permission for 2,0
00 homes and what we need is help from the government to move those forward now rather than a scheme which could be years away.
"We have got a lot of affordable housing just waiting to be built but nothing is moving in the current economic climate. We as a council are elected to make the decisions where housing should go. That's what democracy is about and not a government minister deciding the sites."
Ford Parish Council chairman Cllr Ron Field was more optomistic.
He said: "The meeting went quite well and I think Ms Flint took notice of what we said."
He raised with her his fear that the promised jobs which will arrive with the eco-town will bring no more prosperity than the existing employment.
He did not see the eco-town attracting the kind of highly-skilled employment needed to raise the average weekly wage of the area.
"You are not going to get a doubling of the wages with the sort of jobs you are going to be getting there," he claimed.
"If the houses are going to go for £350,000, then I can't see people who work in Ford in warehouse-type jobs being able to afford them.
"The eco-town will not bring any economic benefits for the majority of people."
The full article contains 298 words and appears in OS-Bognor Observer newspaper.
