Object

Representation ID: 4260

Received: 15/03/2023

Respondent: The Goodwood Estates Company Limited

Agent: HMPC Ltd

Legally compliant? Yes

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? Yes

Greater emphasis must be placed through development and site-specific policies to ensure essential infrastructure is provided ‘up front’ before first occupation, and other infrastructure needs provided before the development is completed or the developer has meaningfully left the site.

Past developments have failed to achieve improvements to the A27 and its junctions, and the proximity of some has constrained future opportunities for improvement. The developments, particularly volume housebuilding have added to, rather than mitigated congestion, by following a blinkered, site-centric attitude to meeting housing numbers without responsibility for infrastructure impacts.

The principal causes of A27 congestion are local traffic movements from and to an inadequate local highway network, made worse by poorly integrated new developments, and conflicted priorities between through and crossing traffic. The solution is not as many local people believe to replace the A27 completely with a very costly new “by-pas” of limited economic or environmental benefit to the city and district. Past by-pass proposals have failed to correctly assess the true economic cost of options promoted, or the cost and benefits of tackling the issues at a local level of on-line improvements and co-ordinated improvements in the local highway network; the latter in part being hampered by differing responsibilities (National and local – the limits of which are guarded religiously) and a failure to engage appropriately and positively to solve a common problem.

Neither the local plan nor its strategies should be based on any A27 by-pass premise and should not make provision for any A27 by-pass proposal.