3.10

In order to remedy the undersupply of commercial property within the district, and ensure that the Chichester food cluster continues to provide economic growth and job creation, The Council should allow for the siting of functionally linked developments within the Runcton HDA. This is currently prohibited by the wording of draft Policy E4 which only allows for ancillary developments rather than the suite of development uses required to support a world class food cluster. This would provide investors and businesses with the certainty required to continue to invest within the Chichester District. Furthermore, the colocation of such developments would provide a range of benefits associated with agglomeration including reduced costs, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and increased innovation arising from knowledge spillovers.

Chichester has a highly constrained commercial property market that has an extremely low vacancy rates, along with generally high rents. This is recognised within the Council’s evidence base, with the 2022 HEDNA describing the district’s commercial property market as ‘extremely undersupplied’. It is not considered that the employment allocations proposed within the Local Plan will address this substantial unmet need and indeed a number of the employment land allocations are not preferentially sited relative to the Runcton HDA.

This undersupply of commercial property, taking account of the allocation and the trajectory of delivery and availability of premises at Land south of Bognor Road, is likely to continue to have a significant impact upon the ability of the Chichester food cluster to meet the industry’s requirement for functionally linked commercial premises that are necessary to maintain competitiveness. This requirement for functionally linked operations such as R&D, storage and distribution and office space is detailed in a number of industry reports.