Opinion: +New homes for Sussex

The heat is on. The government is putting pressure on Sussex councils for a dramatic increase in the number of new homes built.

There is a housing crisis. Rising homelessness is distorting the budgets of many councils. The price of owner-occupied homes, and rent levels, put decent housing beyond the reach of many family budgets. Adults in their twenties and thirties find themselves back living with their parents. Despite all this, the housing drive is unpopular with many local residents.

Rightly, the landscapes of the South Downs National Park are protected against most development – but this only increases the pressure on adjoining areas. For many years the Sussex coastal plain – the flat, traditionally agricultural, land between the sea and the Downs – has been squandered: developed piecemeal for hundreds of small estates, with limited public transport, services or shops.

So what is to be done?

Government say new homes can now be built on some Green Belt land. But Sussex has no Green Belt. And there are no plans to permit large scale housebuilding in National Parks.

Protection against over-development should be strengthened. Sussex councils should press government to:

· Extend the National Park– in particular to protect the few places where open country stretches down to the sea, as at Climping and Goring.

· Establish a ‘buffer zone’ around the National Park – a mile-wide strip of land around the park borders, where development is permitted, but with tight controls over density, height, and scale.

There is no good reason why housebuilding should be in sprawling, low rise developments, remote from transport and services. Instead, building new homes should become the opportunity to renew our tired seaside town centres. Councils should use all their powers and resources to encourage more intensive use of urban, brown field land. Adur and Brighton have successfully done this and over many years, building new homes and business premises in the Shoreham Harbour area.

Our seaside towns are well-connected to the existing train and bus networks. Ensuring that more families can live in those centres would bring new demand, investment and jobs in retail and leisure businesses. Car parks can be decked over. Existing shopping areas can be rebuilt as mixed-use residential, retail and employment areas.

Too often, when homes have been built, promised new schools and health centres have not materialised. In encouraging housebuilding in existing towns, councils must ensure that vital new infrastructure is provided at the right time, not many years later.

National government is planning a new wave of New Towns, like those built after 1945. Alongside the New Towns, in the 1950s and 1960s, central and local government invested in helping existing towns – like Swindon, Northampton and Basingstoke – to grow. These Expanded Towns, starting with ready-made mixed communities, were at least as successful as the New Towns that were built from scratch.

These future New Towns will be planned and constructed by Development Corporations, with the powers, capacity and resources to invest. Why not a Development Corporation for our South Coast seaside towns?

Michael Ward