Reader's letter: Southwater has had enough of planners fly-tipping unaffordable new housing
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Over recent months Save Rural Southwater (SRS) and Stammerham Amenity Association (SAA) have been engaging with residents in Southwater regarding the proposed Berkeley Homes application for a further 1,500 new homes, commercial and retail premises, a second village centre, schools and a travellers site in the village.
The question has been put to us many times, “What is the point of this? Even if we wanted to we could not afford to move into these new houses and our children certainly cannot afford them and have to move away from the village to find affordable houses.”
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Hide AdAnd a very common observation has been, “What is the point? The developers always get their way.”
The point of this, regrettably, is very simple: two already very wealthy landowners stand to become very considerably richer; the shareholders of a major UK house builder which has already carpeted large tracts of previously productive farm land around Horsham with new housing estates stand to become considerably richer; and Southwater has become a soft target for our local planners to “fly tip” unnecessary and unwanted new housing.
The price for this huge collective enrichment will be the destructive, unnecessary and unwanted transformation of a rural village with origins dating back to the 14th century into an overdeveloped, multi-centred and socially divided urban sprawl, amongst the longest in the country.
Southwater has had enough.
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