Councillors failed to communicate Rookwood plan

In a letter published in the WSCT of Aug 18, Cllr Claire Vickers (cabinet member for planning) denies that Rookwood was planned ‘behind closed doors’ as reported on previously.

In fact it has been planned for at least four years without any consultation outside the Cabinet.

The indisputable fact is that until January of this year, only a handful of people understood what was being planned.

Key stakeholders such as the local Neighbourhood Councils, Parish Councils, the Friends of Warnham, the Horsham Society and the Sussex Wildlife Trust, were not consulted.

Information was so slow to emerge that it took a Freedom of Information request, simply to extract a copy of the Rookwood plan (since published in the County Times).

Either all of these groups were asleep at the wheel, or Cllr Vickers must accept there was a comprehensive failure to communicate.

Rookwood would surely have caused a public outcry in the May 2019 District Elections, had the true facts been known at the time.

It’s extraordinary to suggest that everybody knew about Rookwood all along, but for some reason didn’t care about it until now.

In any case, what matters is not simply the lack of notification, but the complete absence of consultation. We’ve never had the opportunity to debate whether Rookwood should be developed in the first place.

The time to do this was not 2020, nor even 2019, but when the project actually started. Unknown to members outside the Cabinet, outside consultants were hired as far back as 2016. This date is several years before any alleged briefing listed by Cllr Vickers. Costs to date have amounted to £150k of public money.

Rookwood must be judged on its own merits, and not in a high-stakes beauty contest with all the other large sites.

This is both the worst time, and the worst way, in which to make a decision. I strongly request that Rookwood is removed from this round of the Local Plan, so it can be given the careful, public consideration it deserves as our single most valuable asset.

This is a repeat case of the Drill Hall, in which a much-loved public resource is being slated for development without prior consultation.

NB: Finally, I’m surprised to see Cllr Vickers implying I attended just 30 per cent of her Policy Development Advisory Groups (PDAGs). She is of course wholly aware that I only joined her PDAG a few weeks ago and I was therefore not invited.

My attendance at PDAGs of which I’m a member is 100% per cent as the official HDC record shows, and I hope she will take the earliest opportunity to correct this.

Cllr John Milne

Roffey North