If we ever questioned this government’s commitment to the environment, we should be deeply worried about it now. In a remarkable personal intervention into Horsham District’s local affairs, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has abruptly overturned a long-standing restriction on over-abstraction of water from the Arun Valley.

A secretly recorded video has been released of her speaking at a conference of tech executives. She told them that she’d intervened to help a developer build about 20,000 homes in north Sussex. They had been held up, she said, by “some snails … a protected species or something”. She assured her audience they needn’t worry about them, however, because they “are microscopic … you cannot even see” them.

It’s not just this blithe dismissal of high-level habitats legislation that’s shocking. It’s also the language she uses when she thinks she’s speaking behind closed doors. What she does not understand is that the snail is the canary in the coal mine. It’s a sign that the whole local ecosystem is suffering.

The government’s commitment to the environment has failed its first real test. She doesn’t care about the environmental risk - not if it gets in the way of her ‘growth’ mantra.

John Milne MP at local housing development.

placeholder image — John Milne MP at local housing development.

While the Chancellor’s close relationship with a developer is itself a matter for concern, there is another, more urgent matter to be addressed. Under successive governments, Horsham has been working to a housebuilding target of about 1k homes per year. However, all new construction has been severely restricted until the water supply situation can be fixed. Horsham District Council has therefore been caught between two incompatible demands - one law says they have to build 1k a year, the other says they can’t build anything at all, if it means extra water.

As a result, HDC has fallen far behind its annual housebuilding target. The punishment for missing targets is that planning inspectors are much more likely to approve speculative applications, no matter how inappropriately sited. For example, the recent application for 800 homes at Horsham Golf & Fitness Village went through on just this basis - despite a vigorous HDC legal challenge..

Horsham should not be punished for doing what the government tells us to. I have repeatedly raised this issue with the Housing Minister, and I will meet him again soon to press the point.

For 4 years, Horsham has been the victim of an impossible contradiction, and that’s 4 years too many.