Arun housing plans in the hands of the people

Councillor Ricky Bower, the district council’s cabinet member for planning, was speaking at a consultation evening in Yapton called to debate the issue of how many homes should be built in Arun over the next 17 years.

Asked by a villager whether the council would reject a 99.99 per cent vote against housing, in an official parish referendum, Mr Bower paused, before replying: “It would be extremely unlikely.”

The meeting on Monday, January 24 at Yapton and Ford Village Hall was the latest in a series in which the council is gauging public opinion on the level of housebuilding in the district.

Extra homes

The government is scrapping centrally-set housing numbers – Arun was previously expected to find land for more than 11,000 extra homes in the years up to 2026 – in favour of targets set by councils themselves, but backed up by fully-researched evidence.

Consultants appointed by Arun have reported back with four scenarios of building between 362 and 628 new homes a year in the district, compared with the previous annual target of 565 set by the South East Plan.

Parish councils will have an input into the figures, by preparing their own parish plan, and backed up by a referendum, but Mr Bower said these would not automatically be adopted by Arun, which had to take a wider view of housing and employment needs.

Yapton resident Deborah Robinson stressed the importance of encouraging young people to stay in their home area.

Young people

“The only way were are going to be able to do that is by improving the infrastructure. Young people will want to move closer to where they work. So how are we going to attract the jobs?

“How do you come up with a plan for somewhere like Yapton, to create the business opportunities to keep young people here in the first place?”

Arun council leader Gill Brown said that neither the 17 years of the local plan, nor 117 years, would be be long enough to provide the new job opportunities without the road and rail infrastructure that was needed in the area.

Mrs Robinson added: “As someone who commuted to Victoria for 20 years, it strikes me a lot of people would like to work closer to home. That’s the way to breathe new life into a community.”

The meeting was told that a total of 52 people from Yapton, Ford and Climping were on Arun’s housing waiting list, the majority needing one and two-bedroom accommodation.

Mr Bower said: “There is some degree of housing need in the area.

“There are people who want to live in your parish who have some connection here.”