LETTER: What are the real alternatives?

I view the matter from the vantage point of having worked in planning for a number of years – not at Horsham District Council, I add. I do not live in Horsham town but my mother has lived there for a number of years.

The disappointing aspect of so many of the letters is that that no one seems to have read the facts in the council document and instead they have rushed in with often highly emotional comments based on considerable misleading information that they have picked up from protest groups.

Like it or not, the simple and unavoidable fact about the District Council Planning Framework is that the Government’s overwhelming requirement from any such plan is that the council must put forward strong ideas for economic development. I suspect that this will not change whatever the political colour of the Government.

There is one simple and overwhelming consideration to be made. If the council submits a plan that does not include economic development as a high priority it will just get rejected. We would simply have to start all over again giving open-house to developers who could then come up with applications to build in places totally of their choosing, given that Horsham District does not have a perceived five-year housing supply.

Is there any real alternative to the north of the A264 site? A site where a developer is prepared to invest its own money in building the infrastructure. The only alternative that has been offered in this newspaper is to somehow use the remaining small brownfield sites in Horsham town and put the rest on farming fields around Billingshurst.

I ask a simple question.... if you were a large national company wanting a new UK HQ, where would you go? Would this be north of Horsham with all it facilities, 10 minutes from a motorway, a short drive to a major airport and with a new railway station or a further 30 minutes down the road on the single lane A29?

Paul Mason

London Road, Ashington