Thank you to all those Lancing residents who returned the survey we delivered from door to door across the village about the proposed New Monks Farm development. At the time of writing over 700 households had responded and I submitted the findings as part of my letter of objection to the formal planning application with Adur Council. This followed the packed public meeting I held at Lancing Parish Hall last month where not a single person present spoke in support, including councillors of all parties.
I will post the results in full on my website and will update it when there is further news. The Planning Committee is likely to consider the application in the next few months after seeking further information particularly from various highways’ bodies about the traffic implications.
The result from the Lancing jury however is that over 70% of local residents oppose the development outright. Some 76% thought there were too many houses proposed and 68% were against the inclusion of IKEA which was a major theme to emerge at the public meeting because of the traffic implications for the A27. No fewer than 82% of responses said they were ‘not at all confident’ that the A27 could accommodate additional traffic from customers. Interestingly 61% said that rather than build a new school on the site the funds should be used to expand existing nearby schools. This reflected the concerns expressed by the AREA air pollution group about air quality around the road.
These results may differ from the earlier Herald poll which attracted an unusually high rush of online responses without any identifier of whether they were actually from locals. By contrast our survey were delivered by and locally and moss responses included local addresses. Over to you Planning Committee.
The New Monks Farm public consultation is now closed but it is likely a new application for the mooted development in west Sompting will emerge soon though the developers have not given me any information whatsoever. When they do I will again make sure that as much information is put in the public domain as possible and will be happy to organise more meetings. Cleary the further pressure on the A27 will be a key issue of concern together with the existing traffic nightmare in Sompting village.
The separate A27 consultation closed earlier in September and I have publicised my views widely. Sir Peter Bottomley and I met Highways England last week and we expect a response to the consultation by January when they will also give an update on other scoping work they have been undertaking. In the meantime we will continued to put pressure on the Transport Secretary for additional funds which is the only way we are likely to get a genuinely workable solution. Either way I still think it is crazy that we should have to consider such major development along the A27 way before we have worked out ways of coping with existing traffic let alone the likely added demand.