Ban on lorriesin town urged

The bar on heavy goods vehicles trundling through the town to reach the major new estate being built in Felpham is wanted to keep the area's roads flowing with traffic.

National developer Barratt Homes has been told by Arun District Council's development control committee to steer its contractors' drivers away from the A259.

The company's representative, Graham Beck, was present at the meeting. He told the committee: 'I have made lots of notes.'

The company regularly talks with the council about how to reduce the impact of the extensive development on the surrounding area.

The councillors' comments came when they approved Barratt's plans for a temporary access road on to the Felpham site.

This route will leave the A259 Flansham Lane about 50m south of Hoe Lane and some 240m north of Roundle Avenue.

The access is needed to allow the initial work to begin on the site of 700 homes and a section of the Bognor Regis northern relief road.

Some of the access route will be absorbed into the relief road layout when that is built. Barratt's estimates that some 80 HGV movements '“ 40 in/ 40 out '“ will use the access in the first month. This will reduce to a lesser number of vans as work progresses. It is expected to take three to four weeks to build the temporary route.

Building the housing will take a likely five years.

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Cllr Ricky Bower (East Preston) said: 'If all the construction traffic comes down Chichester Road trying to get to Felpham, we will be in quite a difficult situation, especially as building work is about to start in Bersted as well.

'We should ask the county council in its talks with Barratt Homes to make sure the construction traffic arriving on site has not on its route gone through Bognor.

'We don't want to see the A259 closed in two places at the same time.

'People just will not come here if we keep locking down the through roads in Arun.'

Cllr Elaine Stainton (Felpham West) said: 'People are never going to get to work if the lorries are going to be arriving in the rush hour.'

Clr Sylvia Olliver (Bersted) said: 'I hope these lorries do not co-incide with those for Bersted because it will be hell on the A259.

'All I can say is God help the people of Middleton because that is the way people will go to avoid the traffic.'

Arun planning officer Stephen Cantwell said the planning inspector whose advice to approve the housing was accepted by the government stated that notices should be placed at the site access telling drivers which route the council wanted them to take.

But Arun head of planning services Howard Cheadle warned members that the construction work was bound to affect the surrounding area.

'We are starting on what will be a major and long-term development which will have an impact on the highways.

'There are no two ways about it. You can't construct a site of this without an impact,' he stated.

The first stage of work has involved felling trees along the site's boundary with the A259. But Arun has imposed tree preservation orders on hundreds of others to ensure they should survive the major building work of the next five years or so.

The orders apply to 22 individual trees as well as 436 within groups.

The committee's approval was also subject to 16 conditions controlling the work and five more informative conditions which Barratt is asked to follow.