Where will the traffic go?

AT its meeting on Thursday, members of Littlehampton Town Council provided a thorough and focused debate on sustainable growth and they were not afraid to write the bottom line – no major development scheme without the transport infrastructure to support it!

Outwardly, it was about little more than the sale of allotments to a developer, but councillors showed their determination not to vacillate any longer over the need to take existing traffic and thousands of vehicles from new development at Toddington, around and not through Lyminster crossing and the village.

There are echoes of the situation which bedevils every plan to provide homes and jobs on any site in Arun and confines the district to its low-pay economy – the failure of central government to provide transport infrastructure which is fit for purpose! In this instance, to take

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through traffic on the A27 around Arundel instead of through it.

In 2003/04 the county council showed a similar attitude – no major development in Arun west of the river without an Arundel by-pass.

That position was undermined by regional government's failure to support West Sussex interests in dealings with central government.

However, if David Cameron is our next Prime Minister, then we are promised a fundamentally new set of circumstances which will support the position taken by both town and county councils – no appointed regional intermediary and grassroots councils setting their own building levels, the assessment of which will no doubt start with "need" and "infrastructure" given equal weight. Or will he go native in the Westminster power culture?

Harold Hall

Snowdrop Cottage

Warningcamp

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