‘Disregarded’

It is only 14 months since this £20 million redevelopment of the Body Shop and Warehouses opened as a supermarket, filling station and Enterprise Hub.

The formal consent had been granted following extensive public consultation by the developer’s agency in the September of 2011, and was based on environmental and employment values.

To preserve local amenity, the plan guaranteed sole access to the store by way of the Wick roundabout.

Otherwise, those minimal users of the Enterprise Hub were given ingress and egress by a single gated point in Courtwick Lane.

The provision of the Enterprise Hub ensured a 35,000 square feet of office area which could be sub-divided to cater for ‘start-up and growing companies’.

Relative correspondence endorsed this intention, which was to enhance and provide ‘an attractive environment and preserve residential amenity’.

This was to prove a significant factor in the planning process.

The council was impressed with these assurances and that its delivery would add another 200 jobs to those 300 new supermarket opportunities.

However, such commitments now appear to be quickly disregarded and the nearby 600-house development project is now well on its way without this associated opportunity in the labour market.

That extensive population growth is now not only becoming segregated from the education facilities but also from the welfare services which are to be equally remote, and severed by the increasingly busy A259 principal traffic route.

Furthermore, this episode disqualifies the absurd belief that extensive house building programmes will, in some way, deliver business opportunities.

Derek Hulmes

Littlehampton town councillor

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