“As much as I would love to say ‘on your bike’, I don’t think we can.”
This was the response from the chair of Mid Sussex District Council’s planning committee when a developer asked to be let off paying £645,000 towards affordable housing.
Gary Marsh (Con, Ardingly, Balcombe & Turners Hill) spoke during a meeting last week where an application relating to development at Slaugham Manor was discussed.
A report to the committee said the partially completed development of luxury flats and houses, which was approved in 2016, was no longer financially viable due to increasing building costs.
As such applicant Martin Homes Slaugham Ltd wanted the £645,000 dropped from the Section 106 legal agreement drawn up with the council – and for another £270,000 of contributions to be reviewed.
The application was not greeted fondly by the committee.
John Hitchcock (Ind, Crawley Down) said: “I think it’s a disgrace – an absolute disgrace.”
And Mr Marsh added: “Anger courses through my veins on this one, to say the least.”
He told the meeting that plans for 23 affordable homes elsewhere in the district would suffer if the money was lost.
He said: “I have a scheme ready to go up in Handcross – I’m on the parish council up there – that was relying on this money. But we’ve now not got that money, so it’s depriving people who desperately need a house in Handcross because we haven’t got that money.”
While some members said they would ‘dearly love to send a message’ to the developers and refuse the application, officers warned against that action.
They advised that the council would struggle to defend such a decision when an appeal was no doubt launched with the Planning Inspectorate.
The committee voted unanimously to defer the application so that officers could speak to the applicants again and try to ‘get a better deal’ for the council.
John Dabell (Con, East Grinstead Town) said: “They’ve got nothing to lose at the moment but we’ve got a lot to lose in terms of what we want for our people.”
To view the application, log on to pa.midsussex.gov.uk and search for DM/23/2174.
