Less of a town

Littlehampton has ceased to be a town and become a conurbation, with a formless fog of housing rolling remorselessly across the countryside.

The creation of Arun District in 1974 allowed two urban districts, at Bognor and Littlehampton, to dominate the area. Surrounding villages are appendages, with little weight, with places like Wick, Toddington, and soon Lyminster, overwhelmed. In time the new bypass through Toddington will also spell the death of Lyminster, when the conurbation again has “need” to expand.

If housing had been provided for local people, and not the world at large, the town would be far smaller, and all families would be accommodated without the massive in-filling of today. Indeed, pleasant main roads of villages are being redeveloped, and their character entirely undermined, by large ugly structures and car parks. It is a sellers’ market even now.

The idea that the new estate provides employment is rich. Several thousand people create their own economy. The existing town needs its own commerce.

Not so long ago, Beaumont Park was an open space east of Littlehampton. There is also a strategic gap at Kingston, which carried through to Highdown. But encircling development, including the new (ASDA) supermarket, is reducing this to a hole in the conurbation, being slowly strangled. A similar gap south of Angmering is now little but an area of playing fields, also encircled.

At present, it is becoming impossible to use railway crossings, waiting for several trains miles away to pass through.

With increasing traffic, try solving that without massive reconstruction.

The coastal plain is a breadbasket for the future. It is not a building site for an unsustainable population. The economy of this country has taken over society. Expansion is now an iron law, as if Sussex before 1800 could never realistically have existed. It was far more real than today.

R.W. Standing

Sea Road

East Preston