Arun council leader defends moving ahead with updated local plan to reduce speculative development

Leader of the Opposition, Shaun Gunner (Con, Rustington East) fears the council is concreting over Arun’s green spaces by favouring undeveloped greenfield sites over previously developed brownfield sites for new developments, and not sticking to their campaign promises.

He made the comments in the Full Council meeting on Wednesday, July 19, in relation to the start of work on an updated local plan by the recently elected cross-party administration.

He said: “I think they should apologise to the residents of this district for them making some promises around them, prioritising brownfield developments, stopping houses being built on the floodplain, letting local people decide how to spend the money, protecting grade 1 farmlands, protecting our greenfields.

“Residents voted Liberal Democrat believing it was a vote to stop houses being built, we now know the opposite is true.

“Residents are rightly furious that they voted for a party that insisted it would fight housing developments, and has now nodded through a new local plan which will see greenfields concreted over with up to 11,250 houses.”

Leader of the Council, Matt Stanley (LibDem, Marine) said he was ‘disappointed but not surprised’ at Mr Gunner’s comments, stating expert recommendations supported the plan, and the administration is not just Lib Dems, but a cross-party one and decisions are made jointly.

He said: “We have failed to secure a five year land supply since 2019 – developers everywhere are securing properties through appeals.

“We can continue to stick our head in the sand, as we have done over the last two years [under the Conservatives] and hope someone resolves our problems for us, or we can do the responsible thing and look to control what we can control – and that is through the local planning process.

“Do we want to influence development and seek to control it? Or do [members] just want to continue to hope that it will just go away?”

Richard Bower (Con, East Preston) said developers were not following through on approved developments, and this is an issue that is contributing to housing shortfalls, a sentiment previously shared by the head of the planning committee Martin Lury (LDem, Bersted) and fellow planning committee member Simon McDougall (Lab, Pevensey) in planning meetings.

Mr Lury revealed during the meeting they would be sending a letter to the national government about housing and planning issues in Arun, hopefully to help inform national policy – saying the letter will be given to the public and the press before it is sent.

Leader of the Independents David Huntley (Ind, Pagham) said: “I moved to Pagham in 2000, and I’ve just watched the landscape be completely trashed by this ‘wonderful’ local plan.

“We need to get a priority on the community land trust, council houses, the sort of houses that are being built now are completely wrong and we’re not making enough fuss to conservative government.

“We need to get the policy nationally changed.”

The original local plan was adopted under the Conservatives in 2018, who then voted not to delay updating it when they returned to power in 2021.