Bersted residents - Don't forget to voice your housing concerns

A mobile consultation unit will be open between 7.30am and 3pm on Monday, February 16, at Jubilee Community Centre, off Chalcraft Lane.

It will contain Arun District Council's proposals to earmark farmland a few hundred metres south along Chalcraft Lane for up to 2,500 homes as well as businesses and community facilities.

Initial work on the scheme, dubbed the Bognor Regis Eco-Quarter, has already got under way by the landowners.

North Bersted is already expected to accommodate 650 homes when the site six development on fields on the opposite side of Chichester Road eventually gets underway.

Bersted Parish Council chairman Cllr Brian Knight said he hoped residents would attend Monday's exhibition to say that enough was enough.

"Everybody who can should go along to visit the display. It's very important that people have their say. It's yet more grade one farmland which will end up under concrete," he commented. "The more that type of land gets used for housing the less we are able to grow our own crops as a country.

"That means more has to be imported, either by boat or by air to the detriment of the environment, which is ironic considering this is supposed to be an eco-quarter. It just does not add up."

Cllr Knight said he would be attending the exhibition to give his personal opinion.

"The parish council doesn't think the land off Chalcraft Lane should be used for building," he stated, "because we have too much development here already."

But the parish council had yet to make a formal decision about the development plans. It was waiting for more information from Arun to be able to do that.

The district council has organised the mobile unit to take the plans for development to the locations where the building could take place.

The trailer will also be at Yapton Village Hall on March 2, Eastergate Village Hall on March 18 and Barnham railway station car park on March 23. Its opening times will be 7.30am until 3pm each day.

Arun has put forward three options for greenfield sites to accommodate the thousands of extra homes it will be expected to approve up to 2026.

Its favoured option is for 2,500 homes at North Bersted, 2,000 north of Littlehampton and 500 at Angmering.

Other possibilities are 5,000 homes at Ford or 2,500 around Westergate and Barnham, 1,500 north of Littlehampton and 1,500 at Angmering.

The consultation period about the choices begins today and ends on April 2.

After that, district councillors will finally decide which of the options '“ or mixture of them '“ will become their final policy.

What do you think? Click here to send a letter or leave a comment below.

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