Have you say about new homes in Bognor Regis

A special meeting will be held of the Joint Western Arun Area Committee to debate the important subject.

The committee brings together parish, district and county councillors and is the only place in which members of the public can ask questions of all three tiers of local government.

Its regular meetings are held every two months. But a special session will take place in the coming months at which how much house building to allow will be the focus of debate.

The meeting was revealed by Arun District Council leader Gillian Brown who said: "There will be a special joint western meeting because housing is a very important subject.

"We want everybody to come along, ask questions and understand what the subject is all about. And the council can get the responses from that.

"The next stage will be deciding where the homes will go, but that will take a lot of time."

Cllr Mrs Brown made her comments to Aldwick parish councillors last week soon

after the district council had set its interim new house building target.

Arun's members decided the figure should be 2,225 homes. This is about a fifth of the 11,500 homes the previous government had insisted the district should accommodate.

The new target is already covered by planning permissions granted by councillors which have yet to be built and gives the district council a five-year supply of housing land.

This means no large-scale housing schemes need to be approved in the immediate future.

But the current figure will need to be followed by a longer-term target until 2026. This is where the joint western meeting will play a part.

"We will be finding out what the local housing need is from our housing register," said Cllr Mrs Brown.

"We do need housing to improve the economic vitality of the area, but we also need to turn our attention to providing new jobs.

"A total of 14,000 people out-commute from the Arun district every day of the week. We need to find out what jobs they need and how we can provide them here."

One of the changes promised by the current government would enable communities to keep the first six years of council tax from each new property to spend on local services.

Cllr Mrs Brown said a method would have to be established to enable residents to have their say.