I wish to lodge a strong personal objection to the draft Chichester District Council (CDC) Local Plan in which it is proposed that Loxwood is subjected to further development between 2019 and 2035 to, in total, an additional 125 homes.
My first objection to the proposed 125 new houses is on the grounds of failure to meet the sustainability criteria defined in the draft Local Plan. Fundamental village infrastructure is inadequate to support this scale of development, additional to the planned new housing already permitted. Specifically, Loxwood's sewage provision has been stated by Southern Water as inadequate for any further capacity and there is no plan to upgrade this area in Southern Water's 2020-2025 financial plans. The current additional housing being constructed in 2018/2019 is requiring sewage holding tanks which will involve regular emptying by tanker (additional heavy vehicle use of our village roads). Surely in the 21st Century it is not acceptable to commit to any substantial housing development that cannot be served by mains sewage.
Additionally, areas of our village are liable to flooding, both surface water and fluvial. This will be further compounded if greater surface land area that is currently vegetation and natural drainage into the water table is replaced by impervious building surfaces.
Loxwood has no public transport to serve the local community and, with proposed further cuts to rural bus services, the one bus a day to Guildford has a vulnerable future. Given we do not have any local employment opportunities, other than 2 shops, a hair salon and a health centre, all residents require cars to travel to work. There is already a need to relieve traffic volume and speed on Loxwood's minor country roads and lanes which, as a linear settlement, carry significant traffic through the village, additional to that created by the village population itself. It is highly relevant to note that Loxwood has narrow public roads along which period residential properties with no off-street parking require residents' cars to be parked on the roads, thus creating congestion at regular times through every day particularly at pinch points in the village, specifically the High Street outside the parade of shops and in Station Road, off which the village school and medical centre are located. At these locations the roads do not have the width for 2 lanes of traffic to flow uninterrupted. This is an issue today, without further housing in the village.
With increasing housing development around Loxwood, including the expansion of Horsham, several sites in the neighbouring village of Alfold, the significant Waverley Borough Council's scheme for in excess of 1,800 homes at the approved Dunsfold Park 'new village' and substantial new developments in Cranleigh and Billingshurst to name a few, the volume of passing traffic using Loxwood's minor roads is very relevant to any further development of this village. There is no option to widen the road due to the village settlement shape and we should not be put in the position where in future years there is the need to carve up our surrounding countryside to put in a village by-pass to re-route high volumes of traffic passing through the village; this is a recognized East-West cross country route to and from Gatwick Airport and it is a well used North-South route from Guildford to the south coast. Traffic is getting increasingly heavy on the parallel A281 and this will only increase as the sizeable developments referenced above are completed; with this more traffic will continually seek to use B2133 as a 'rat run'.
I am also objecting on the basis of the process followed by the planners, specifically, CDC's failure to follow national planning guidance in developing its draft Local Plan. It has become apparent that no desk top study of potential sites has been carried out by the district council, as specified in the national planning guidelines, and instead the Council allowed the allocation to be dictated by developers proposing sites when CDC requested sites. Further to this, there has been no parish consultations on the site allocations. It is very clear that the proposed additional housing is concentrated on Loxwood alone and not shared across our neighbouring villages of Kirdford, Plaistow, Ifold and Wisborough Green.
In conclusion, the proposed plan is ill-thought through and it is unrealistic to consider that the village of Loxwood, given its settlement make-up and the inevitable impact of significant surrounding development, is able to sustain development to the scale proposed.