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Horsham District Council has changed its reason for refusing plans to build 73 homes in Southwater.

The outline application from Reside Developments Ltd, for the site at Woodfords, in Shipley Road, was refused last April on grounds including its countryside location.

Since the refusal, a number of things have changed.

Reside has launched an appeal to the planning inspector and the council can no longer demonstrate that it has a five-year supply of deliverable housing land.

The latter would stand against the council during the appeal.

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Usually this would leave the authority waiting with bated breath on the inspector’s decision.

But a position statement on water neutrality, which was published by Natural England in the autumn, changed the playing field.

Now applicants have to show that their developments would not increase demand on water supplies.

Horsham, which was identified by the Environment Agency as being in an area of serious water stress, is supplied by Southern Water from its Sussex North Water Resource Zone.

Essentially, the fear is that the current rate of water abstraction – the process of taking water from surface or underground sources – is having an impact on protected sites in the Arun Valley.

So during a meeting of the planning committee on Tuesday (March 1), members agreed to change the reasons for refusal, this time on water neutrality grounds.

A report to the planning committee said that, as the appeal documents filed by Reside did not include a Water Neutrality Statement, it was ‘not possible to conclude with sufficient certainty’ that the development would not harm the integrity of those sites.

The decision marked the second time an application from Reside has fallen foul of water neutrality concerns.

Last month, plans for 81 homes in Partridge Green were refused for a second time, for exactly the same reason.

To view the application in full, log on to public-access.horsham.gov.uk and search for DC/20/2564.

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Reason changed for refusal of 73-home Southwater development