Reader's letter: Perpetual building site for Crawsham developments could cause 20 years of disruption

Each time I apply the brakes to join the back of a traffic queue, I wonder whether the majority of my fellow motorists accept the disruption with greater equanimity than me.

The construction work in North Horsham seems to be responsible for ad hoc road closures, reduced lanes, speed restrictions and temporary traffic lights for miles around and I expect this status quo will continue for months and possibly years to come.

There are several mass developments underway around Crawley and Horsham, many of which have just started, including sites at Kilnwood Vale, Pease Pottage, South Horsham, North Horsham, Forge Wood, Horley, Broadbridge Heath and Southwater.

Just looking at recently out-of-date maps of the area shows how much change has occurred in the past decade.

But despite sluggish sales in some of these developments, too much is never enough and the state of roads around Horsham is just a mild taste of inconvenience compared to what the authorities are cooking up for Crawley.

Homes England, the Government quango, is using public money to advocate for (and silence dissent from) a masterplan to build a major Gatwick link road and a “Crawsham” super-suburb of around 25,000 residents, which would obliterate the last remaining green corridor between the two towns.

The Crawsham development would be three times the size and scale of the North Horsham one. This perpetual building site environment of gridlock, bulldozers, concrete, noise and dead wildlife is projected to last for twenty years.

This life sentence is plenty of time for those fatalistic residents who just accept the imposition of bureaucratic diktat to reflect on the consequences of their silence. My hope is that more of them will take a few minutes to register opposition to this ill-conceived idea whilst it is still just a proposal.

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