A new Local Plan for Horsham District
The long awaited Local Plan for Horsham District has now been published on the Council website, prior to being presented at Cabinet and Full Council on 11th Dec.
It was the need to pass a Local Plan and keep control of the future of Horsham District that effectively broke the previous Tory administration. Infighting and a series of rebellions led to a rapid sequence of leaders, which bizarrely matched the turnover of Tory Prime Ministers at Westminster.
So what’s different in the Liberal Democrat proposed Local Plan? There’s a major new emphasis on environmental issues, affordability and active travel. Under new regulations, new houses will be built to slash both carbon emissions and energy bills. The average household will save over £1,000 year – a win for cost of living and a win for the planet at the same time!
Priority will be given to homes for social rent and there’s a new emphasis on Land Community Trusts, which offer an alternative way to deliver really low cost housing.
As for the contentious issue of housing numbers, this Local Plan brings a pause to help the District catch up after a period of breakneck growth. Under the Tory national system (the Standard Method) our target should have been 1200pa. But by taking advantage of Water Neutrality, which is based on EU environmental rules, this Local Plan allows for a modest 480pa for the next 5 years, before increasing again. We need more houses, but at a pace that allows infrastructure and services to keep up.
For location, a key priority has been to choose sites that solve gaps in education provision. Southwater is the largest settlement in the whole of West Sussex without its own secondary school. That will be fixed. Crawley will also get a much need secondary school at West of Ifield, and Billingshurst gets a new primary school.
Any Local Plan has to be drawn up under government rules that get in the way of helping the community. But our Liberal Democrat HDC Councillors can confidently say, the plan they have presented is very much better than the Tory version that was withdrawn in January, in order to avoid unpopularity in the May election. (Not that it helped them very much!)