‘If only money can protect Adur and Worthing’s green spaces, we’re in for some big bills’

Letter from: Peter Bartram, former leader of Adur District Council, The Meadway, Shoreham
New Salts FarmNew Salts Farm
New Salts Farm

Neil Parkin, Adur District Council’s leader, has awarded himself an unmerited round of applause for spending more than £1million of taxpayers’ money to buy New Salts Farm and save it from development. Read the full story here

Instead, he should be explaining why it’s been necessary to write a huge cheque to a property speculator when he’d told us the Adur Local Plan, agreed in 2017, would protect the district’s ‘green gaps’ with the force of planning law.

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The truth of the matter is that New Salts Farm attracted the attention of property speculators because the council has been too slow in delivering the new homes promised in the local plan.

The giveaway came in the prospectus for the sale of New Salts Farm issued by the property agents Oakley Commercial earlier this year. It noted that New Salts Farm wasn’t allocated for development.

But it added: “However, it is considered that this will change due to Adur Council’s land supply being undermined by slow delivery elsewhere.”

Astonishingly, in the same document, Adur Council seemed to add credence to the development story by entering a ‘statement of common ground’ with the sellers of the land and West Sussex County Council.

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This said that building 455 houses on New Salts Farm ‘would not have a detrimental transport impact’. Tell that to the drivers who stack up in queues around the Saltings roundabout at morning and evening rush hours!

To put it in a nutshell, it is Adur Council’s dilatory approach to new house building that put New Salts Farm into play as a development prospect.

In Britain we’ve had a long history of using planning law to protect our open spaces. That’s why we should have been able to rely on the promises in the Adur Local Plan to keep New Salts Farm green.

If we had to pay landowners to protect every acre, we’d have no national parks and no ‘green belts’ around cities. If it turns out that only money – and not law – can protect our environment, we’re in for some big bills in years to come.