LETTER: ‘Countryside or concrete?’ debate

Pre-election television debates between the leaders of the main parties and whether Mr Cameron will take part in them is very much in the national news.
By The Newsroom
Published 13th Mar 2015, 06:00 BST
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Here in Horsham on Saturday March 21,10am to 12.30pm, CPRE Sussex is hosting a pre-election hustings for Horsham’s Parliamentary candidates at the Drill Hall, Denne Road, Horsham RH12 1JF, with ‘Countryside or Concrete?’ as its essential theme.

Essential because a fundamental issue for communities has been the rewriting and dumbing-down of planning regulations by the Government enabling developers seemingly to build where they like on green fields adjoining villages, irrespective of the justified concerns and objections of residents, allowing the Planning Inspector Mr G. Salter to impose an apparently arbitrary target of 15,000/16,000 houses on the District, enabling developers to obtain reductions in payments for the provision of much needed affordable homes and infrastructure and opening up our countryside to fracking.

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As has been rightly highlighted by the WSCT, party politics have ‘trumped genuine public consultation’ (County Times Comment 19Feb15) and the concerns of local people dismissed or ignored in consequence.

CPRE Sussex’s pre-election hustings will be an unprecedented and much needed opportunity for members of the public to put questions to and hear what Conservative, Green, Labour, UKIP and independent Parliamentary Candidates have to say about planning and the future of our countryside, and the rights of communities to decide where development should go.

Book your free place either on line through the CPRE Sussex website:

www.cpresussex.org.uk or by emailing:[email protected]

or by phone: 01825 890975.

Dr R.F. SMITH

for Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) Sussex (Horsham District), Bashurst Copse, Itchingfield