LETTERS: Legal challenge is welcome

West Chiltington’s Category 2 status has been crucial to defending the village from a great deal of development which would otherwise have taken place.

The appeal decision on Old Oaks now undermines the safeguards which Category 2 status has given West Chiltington and could be used as a precedent to allow numerous application or garden and back land development – not just in West Chiltington, but in other Category 2 settlements across the district.

West Chiltington Parish Council has received murmerings of a number of potential planning applications of that sort to do just that.

That is why I asked the officers at Horsham to thoroughly review the inspector’s decision and I am pleased that a legal challenge to the inspector’s decision has been launched by the council.

Mr Broster thinks there should be an award of costs. The inspector can award costs on an appeal from a planning decision by Horsham, but normally they don’t unless they regard the council’s actions as unreasonable. It is instructive that no award of costs was made in this case because the inspector did not regard the council’s decision as unreasonable.

I quite understand that Mr Broster wishes to pursue his own interests irrespective of the implications for the community of which he is a part, but he must understand that the institutions which represent the community are going to do all in their power to ensure that the community interest prevails.

PHILIP CIRCUS

(Con) Horsham district councillor for Chanctonbury ward and county councillor for Storrington, North Street, Horsham