Housing Developments: West Sussex

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) that I am glad he secured this debate? I fear the penalty may be that he will be taken into Government: either made a Whip to keep him quiet or a Minister to answer devastating points such as he has made today. I congratulate him, as I congratulate the four of the eight West Sussex MPs who have become Ministers, one of whom has become a Minister again: my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies) and for Horsham (Jeremy Quin). Those of us who are not Ministers—my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Arundel and South Downs and I—have to provide the balance, and we can encourage Government to pay attention.

I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, who very kindly looked after me for some years when he was my Whip: could he please send the Secretary of State to West Sussex and bring the Prime Minister with him, first of all to learn that in Sussex we will not be druv—that means treat us with respect and treat our area with respect—and, secondly, to explain where the land is going to come from for development between the South Downs national park and the coast?

If we take the borough of Worthing, which makes up two thirds of my constituency, the council is proposing to have 200 homes built on Union Place, where the old police station was, opposite the old Conservative office, and over 300 homes, if things go right, at Teville Gate by the station. In the long-term plan, there were proposals for over 700 homes in West Durrington, below the national park, and those have basically been built. There are many other smaller schemes coming forward, including the Aquarena site, where a building application for 21 storeys was rightly refused, and 18 storeys was accepted—still, I think, too high.

I would say to the Minister that if he looks at St Andrews Gardens off Church Road in Tarring, an area where there is no residential building of more than three storeys, there was a proposal by some landlords—freeholders—to stick on an extra floor. The council rightly turned it down, the inspector came along and turned it down in even more firm language, and what happened when people read the Government’s proposals for planning? There is a pre-application now in at the council that is putting people up in arms. People do not vote in my constituency to have a Government proposal misinterpreted and then have everything in that particular ward wrecked, where there are all sorts of other problems. But the main problem, I think, is that it is out of scale for the local area. My constituents, Jon and Michelle Mayes, have written to me to say on the original St Andrews Gardens that, although the people there are nice, the homes are out of place in that particular area. Why should that be coming forward again?

On Thursday, I shall go to celebrate the change of name of Chatsmore Catholic High School to the St Oscar Romero Catholic School. If the Minister and the Secretary of State put Chatsmore in a Google Earth search, they will find that that school, by the railway line, is between the north and south Goring gap—the green fields between Goring in Worthing, Goring-by-Sea and Ferring in the Arun District Council. Persimmon has put in an application for over 450 homes that will totally change its character. Were green belt to spread further than London and Oxford, there would be a green belt around Worthing that would certainly include the north and south Goring gaps, one of which includes Chatsmore Farm to the north, just below the A259.

I would say to the Minister that if he has a chance of looking up Chatsmore on Google Earth, he will see the problem. Where there is an open field now, that is where Persimmon plans or hopes to get approval. It is not in the Worthing Borough Council plan and it is not in any sensible plan. As a shareholder in Persimmon, I can say to the board, “If I get a chance, I’ll come to the AGM”—perhaps I can get many other people to buy one share; I have got more than one share in my private pension—“and say, ‘Could they please pay attention to the shareholders, but even more to the nature of our countryside running down to the coast from the national park?’”

I hope that when we look at the planning proposals, we can accept where it is possible acceptably to have homes, even though there may be local objection, but we should not have homes where it is wrong. The difference between being right and being wrong is even more important than between being right and being left. Having said that, I say to my local Labour party in Worthing West, which for a long time was chaired by Ed Miller, who was secretary of the Ferring Conservation Group, “I will back you all the way. You may have tried the best you can at various elections to get me out, but between elections let us work together to protect the Goring gap.” I say the same thing to the Liberal councillors and others involved in Tarring to protect St Andrews Gardens and the rest of Tarring as well.

This is a cross-party issue. If the Government get it right, they will get more homes—acceptable homes. If they get it wrong, I do not think they will be respected by the people of all parties who want to have a proper planning system that delivers new homes at affordable prices to a range of people who otherwise would find themselves suffering from housing stress. Do not do it at the expense of a ward such as Tarring. Do not do it at the expense of those who want to protect the Goring gap, where the Goring and Ilex Conservation Group unite with the Ferring Conservation Group, and I back them all the way.