Protestors to urge people not to attend consultation at Plumpton Racecourse on 3,000 new homes
A countryside protection group is set to hold a protest against renewed plans for 3,000 new homes in the area.
Members of Don’t Urbanise the Downs (DUTD) are holding a demonstration with placards at Plumpton Racecourse on Saturday, September 5, from 11am.
The group said it will urge people not to attend a ‘public consultation exercise’, which is being held by ‘Eton’s development division’s PR Agency’.
DUTD lead Steve Needham said: “This is a tick-box exercise that only benefits Eton (College) and does nothing to address the issues we have been raising – such as a total lack of any existing infrastructure to speak of in this isolated part of Sussex.”
The planned protest comes after The North Barnes Farm project team announced an eight-week public consultation from August 24 to October 16. Residents are invited to submit their views on plans for up to 3,000 new homes between South Chailey and Plumpton Green.
The North Barnes scheme – which campaigners say will ‘engulf’ the small villages of Plumpton Green, East Chiltington and South Chailey – proposes creating a new primary school, nursery, healthcare facilities and parkland, as well as new homes.
The team behind North Barnes includes Welbeck Land and the landowner Eton College, and the partnership is supported by ADAM Architecture and ECE Planning.
The team has called its project an ‘infrastructure-led development’ and its website said the proposal ‘is being brought forward by a partnership with vision and conscience’. It also said the plan is about ‘creating lasting social, economic and environmental benefit for the widest group of people’.
Alistair Watson, chief executive of Welbeck Land, has said that ‘concentrating new homes and infrastructure in a single location is the best way to meet the area’s needs’.
But Steve Needham said: “Eton’s 450-acre site is much used and loved by people from far and wide. It is productive farmland, crossed by footpaths, bridleways and narrow lanes lined by ancient hedgerows and trees supporting rare wildlife. Right next to the South Downs National Park, it must be conserved for future generations.”
He said: “This ill-considered scheme would bring millions of more car journeys each year adding to road chaos in the surrounding area, which is already gridlocked at key junctions on a daily basis.”
He added that the plan would create ‘a sprawling new town of some 10,000-plus people’.
The Don’t Urbanise the Downs campaign group has been against plans for a proposed new town in the area since 2021. The group has pointed out that the North Barnes Farm site was excluded from a draft of the Lewes Local Plan in 2023.
But in April this year Eton College confirmed its involvement in a new plan for the homes after documents were submitted to Lewes District Council (LDC) seeking an opinion about a proposed development at North Barnes. People can see the documents at planningpa.lewes-eastbourne.gov.uk/online-applications using reference LW/26/0191.