‘No community wants this’: Sussex new town plans anger local Tories
This is a strong example of a perennial problem. I for one find Poundbury an attractive concept. I think the opportunity to bake all the things we have learnt about sustainable settlements into new developments which is opened up by the Garden Village concept is really positive. Starting from scratch in managing city flight is perhaps a better opportunity than always bolting things onto established settlements. Still clearly not everyone agrees in this case.
Plans for a new town in rural Sussex backed by one of the Conservative party’s biggest donors and close allies of Prince Charles, are exposing a split in the Tory party over how to rapidly accelerate housebuilding.
Kingswood, a scheme for 2,850 homes, is being proposed on open fields at Adversane near Horsham which have been assembled by hedge fund billionaire Sir Michael Hintze who has given £4.6m to the Conservatives. Its design is partly inspired by Poundbury, the ersatz Georgian town in Dorset created by Prince Charles, and Sir Michael Peat, the Prince of Wales’s former private secretary is a director of the development company.
But it is being opposed by local Conservative MP Andrew Griffith, who said it is “the wrong type of development in the wrong place” and local Tory councillors who have warned: “No community wants this on their doorstep.” It looks set to be a test case for the government’s controversial new planning strategy announced last month which is set to relax national planning rules and set significantly higher local housebuilding targets in areas including Horsham.