Landowner will not sell her ‘beautiful’ farm to Mayfields for 7,000-home development

Rony Brooks, 76, has lived at Sakeham Farm, off of the Wheatsheaf Road and next to the River Adur, since 1995 together with her partner Tony Baldwin. Unfortunately Tony passed away last year.

Rony owns 198 acres of land at Sakeham and says that the farm is not for sale to Mayfield Market Towns, or anyone else, for development.

She said: “My home is paradise, Sakeham is a beautiful farm, I never lose sight of how lucky I am to live here and apart from being unsuitable for development, I don’t want to lose the home Tony has given me.

“When Tony and I first bought the farm it needed a lot of effort and expense to bring it up to what it is now, initially we planted 20 acres of trees, renovated the farm buildings, cleaned out the ditches and generally brought the farm up to the standard it is now.

“Other members of my family also live on the farm and on my demise, it is intended that they will follow in our farming footsteps.”

Sakeham is a registered organic farm currently carrying a herd of 60 head of beef cattle which hopefully will soon become 90 with the arrival of the young calves in the spring. After a recent survey it was also found that we have various rare species of birds and mammals including geese from Asia and rare bats living on the farm, there is always something interesting to watch ‘.

When he was alive Tony did meet Mayfields’ agents, but nothing was ever agreed and since Tony’s death Rony has ceased all correspondence with the company.

Although ‘a great deal of money’ was offered for the land Rony said that they never seriously entertained the idea of selling and in an article for The Telegraph was quoted as saying ‘money is important but it is not everything’.

Rony described her ‘horror’ at the idea of possibly losing her home. The house is noted in the Doomsday Book and is currently Grade II listed. While she completely understands the current need for affordable housing she believes the site as proposed by Mayfields is ‘completely impractical’ when there are better sites available elsewhere.

Rony added: “The local B roads are dreadful, far too narrow for the amount of traffic envisaged and prone to accidents on a frequent basis, and the farm itself floods whenever we have excessive rain.

“On some days we cannot get off the farm without a four wheel drive vehicle, recently at least 40 per cent of the farm was flooded and with global warming this weather pattern is unlikely to change, I cannot image any insurance company insuring a property built on land with a history of flooding such as Sakeham.”

Horsham District Council is currently consulting on a new local plan and Mayfields’ proposal is one of several strategic sites put forward for development.

However Rony believes that since her land, which she is refusing to sell, is included in the proposed allocation site boundary the development should be seen as undeliverable.

She wrote to HDC in September last year and again in February requesting Sakeham Farm be removed from any documentation, but this has not happened.

Rony described how she would not ‘bow down’ to developers and after what she perceives as HDC’s inaction, adding: “I have totally lost my faith in democracy.”

In response, Peter Freeman, a director at Mayfields, said they controlled by option and ownership more than 1,000 acres in Horsham and Mid Sussex, including five properties totalling 200 acres where the company owns the outright freehold.

He added: “The land we control in Horsham is able to deliver 5,000 homes and new employment space as well as a secondary school, primary schools, town centre, community facilities and large areas of open space. This is our proposal for Horsham’s local plan to 2036.

“The view of Horsham planners is that each major allocation will deliver up to 350 homes per year. Accordingly, the land we currently control is sufficient for the local plan period up to 2036.

“At 5,000 homes, it is already larger and more ambitious than any of the other proposals for new settlements except West of Ifield. We have committed to deliver more in the way of education, health, employment and other amenities to support a new community than any other schemes and we continue to promote this vision passionately.”

A spokesman for HDC said it was consulting on land put forward by the site promotor as this approach was considered to be more transparent, adding: “The aim of the consultation is to seek feedback on a wide range of issues including site deliverability. By setting out the whole site area put forward to us there is a further opportunity for anyone to set out their thoughts on this or other issues.

“The council will take account of all comments submitted as part of the consultation as part of the next stage of the local plan preparation.”

To comment on the local plan visit the council’s website.