Residents set to lose the battle over glasshouses

Councillors will meet on Wednesday, April 8, to finally consider the 15-month-old plans for Park Farm on Lower Bognor Road.

Brinkman's Nurseries wants to build two large glasshouses to enable nursery stock and finished plants like cordylines, fruit and ornamental trees to be grown for supermarkets, garden centres and DIY stores.

The combined glasshouse area will be 12.42ha. This is 10 per cent bigger than the Asda store proposed for Bognor Regis and four times the combined size of the Hothamton and Regis Centre town centre sites.

One glasshouse will measure 11.07ha and will include a loading bay. An office building, car parking areas and water storage tanks also form part of the application.

Nearby homeowners fear that the glasshouses, which will cover almost half the farm, will cause an unacceptable increase in the use of the site.

They are worried about the impact of the extra HGVs on Lower Bognor Road and the surrounding road network.

The fears are shared by Pagham, Aldwick and North Mundham parish councils.

The worries about the impact of the development on road conditions caused Arun district councillors to defer a decision on the scheme last October for more comments from county highways officers.

These have been received and will be given to Arun's development control committee.

Brinkman's Nurseries states that an extra 56 HGVs a day will serve the site once the glasshouses are open on top of the existing 350 two way movements by HGVs out of 6,000 traffic movements in all.

An additional 30 staff journeys to and from the farm will also be generated daily if the glasshouses get the go ahead.

The officers state no evidence exists that the increase will result in any highway safety concerns.

No recorded personal injury accidents had occurred in Lower Bognor Road, or at its south eastern or north western junctions in the past three years directly resulting from HGV traffic, they reported.

As part of the development, a new access route will be created across farmland south of the site from Lower Bognor Road to the yard and car park.

This route will divert farm traffic from within the farmland from an access road close to Morrells Cottage, Park House and Park Farm Cottages to a new access.

Lower Bognor Road will be straightened where it meets the new route. The old section will be returned to agriculture.

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