I am in general agreement with the Council’s Interim Statement. Nevertheless, I submit the following specific comments and suggestions:

I strongly support paragraph 2.3., namely that the Council should seek to guide development to appropriate and sustainable locations. I further propose, however, that the Council should proactively seek sites within the city itself, for high quality high density housing in the most sustainable locations within the District= including perhaps the car parks.
I would refer Councillors to paragraph 8 of the NPPF 2019 whereby all sites under consideration must meet the three overarching objectives for sustainability- all of which are interdependent. First, sustainable development means economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. Much development within the District completed recently or under way fails to meet the principle of sustainability. For example, Madgwick Park is neither integrated with the city of Chichester nor with the village of Westhampnett. Instead, it has destroyed the rural gap between the two. In addition, phase 1 of the Whitehouse Farm development will sit as an outlier within the rural surroundings of the city and destroy the former clear demarcation between town and country.

Further to paragraphs 2.4 (1) and 6.2 (9) I propose that the council should immediately open negotiations with the owners of two major brownfield sites within the city, namely WSCC’s Tannery site at Westgate (which s already on the register of brownfield sites) for which there appears to be no interest in commercial use, and the former House of Fraser department store, which although it is not yet on the register of brownfield sites, is unlikely to generate any interest in either major retail or commercial development. Both sites would be suitable for high quality housing development whilst safeguarding designated heritage assets.

What Chichester needs, is for the District Council to seek proactively to identify potential brownfield sites which would be suitable for housing development. This policy was advocated by the Chichester Society in its June 2018 Newsletter (issue 197, How brownfield’ sites can help solve our housing crisis’ ), which can be found on the Chichester Society’s website.

If Chichester is to preserve its greenfield sites, the District Council it needs to take active steps to encourage proactively freeing up such brownfield sites to free up such sites, rather than sitting on its hands awaiting approaches by local developers and landowners to destroy yet more greenfield sites.