Objection to the Chichester District Council (CDC) Draft Local Plan
I am writing in objection to the new draft Chichester District Council (CDC) Local Plan, in particular the proposed additional allocation of 125 houses in Loxwood for the period 2019 to 2035. This, with the 60 already allocated in the current Local Plan will result in more than 200 new houses in the village in less than 20 years given there'll be further houses built on small windfall sites.

My objection to the draft Local Plan is based on two main points: sustainability and the process by which it was developed as described below.

Firstly, both the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) part 2 requires Local Plans to deliver 'sustainable development' while para 4 of the draft Local Plan also seeks to deliver said 'sustainable development' through the following:

* the pattern of need and demand for housing and employment across the area;
* infrastructure capacity and constraints, in particular relating to wastewater treatment, roads and transport;
* environmental constraints - avoiding flood risk areas, protecting the environment designations, landscape quality, the historic environment and settlement character; and
* the availability of potential housing sites, their deliverability and phasing.

However, CDC is failing to meet those elements at all by allocating a further 125 new house to Loxwood considering that:

* Southern Water has stated that the Loxwood Sewage infrastructure has no more capacity and has no plans to update the infrastructure before 2025;
* Loxwood lacks a viable public transport system; just one bus a day each way between Cranleigh and Guildford;
* residents have to commute by road to work as there's no employment in Loxwood;
* parts of Loxwood are prone to both fluvial and surface water flooding;
* Loxwood has little local demand for new housing.

Secondly, national planning guidance is quite specific that district councils should carry out "desktop" studies of potential housing sites and then consult with the parishes. However, CDC did not followed this guidance and instead issued a call for sites for developers to respond to. Thus developers have driven the allocation of another 125 houses to Loxwood while Kirdford and Plaistow/Ifold have not been allocated any and Wisborough Green gets just 25 houses. No parish consultations took place about site allocations and no effort has been made to share the housing burden across the three parishes defined by CDC as "Service Villages".

So in conclusion I believe CDC has failed the sustainability requirements of both the NPPF and its own draft Local Plan while it has also ignored planning guidance regarding potential housing sites. Consequently, I am objecting to CDC's new draft Local Plan.