Why not take the opportunity for housing in Combe Valley?

To East Sussex local councils, planning councillors and planning officers: Can any of you explain why numerous villages in East Sussex are groaning under the burden of excessive and unwanted urban estates being imposed on virtually any scrap of land when a few miles away the Combe Valley has permitted provision for some 2,000 houses?

That would go a long way to fulfilling the 5 Year Land Supply shortage (which also would vanish if the calculations included those houses where permission had been granted).

Sea Change, Bovis and Trinity College Cambridge would all benefit for these 2,000 homes to be apportioned amongst the local councils closest to the Combe Valley.

Is this yet another example of land banking where once the permission has been forced through against local residents opposition, the land is simply left unstarted, as this would then reduce the 5 YLS shortage?

I’m getting fed up of seeing my small rural village facing upwards of 300 proposed houses being built in urban style estates, and no doubt many other residents in villages throughout East Sussex are feeling the same way, with no provision for infrastructure improvements, as they are supposedly paid for by these same developers.

Yet, here we have an open door with better road and rail links, immediate access to the country park for dog walking, cycling and other leisure activities and with enterprise and business parks needing employees, who would have easy commutes, perhaps even walking distance.

Many of the estate applications that were granted up to 6 years ago were proposed before the Hastings to Bexhill link roads became viable, but now there is an opportunity for hard pressed planning officers to work together with their counterparts to use the Duty to Co-operate provision (that caused the failure of the last Wealden Local Plan) to share out the bounty of 2,000 readily available housing plots.

At a stroke, residents in rural villages would be relieved of the misery of the Damocles Sword of unwanted and unneeded estates and councillors would fill their 5 YLS quotas.

Simultaneously, Sea Change and Trinity College Cambridge would see a maximised return on their investment in the land they hold ready for housing.

After 3 years, Bovis have managed to finally start on the first section of new homes, on the Gateway Road by Wrestwood Road, as imaginatively named as are their architectural styles for “Sussex” style homes.

Of course, many developers will resist giving up the permissions for squeezing houses onto villages, happy to sit on the land and blight residents lives, but here is a ready, willing and waiting location for a bold initiative by planning officers and councillors to co-operate to utilise what is waiting to be developed, rather than impose unwanted houses where residents will be able to show their feelings at the ballot box next spring.

Do planning officers have the stomach to say to developers, “Build where you’re wanted, where there is no resistance”?

I can’t see them working together with other local councils, but a glorious opportunity is there, if they have the nous to make it work.

Or not.... leave it to the ballot box then?

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