Either you need it or you don't

I was privileged to attend the Wealden Local Plan Examination last week, at a posh hotel/golf club. It seemed to suit the barristers, employed by big developers seeking to cash in on their bits of prime land around the area. When you buy a new house, remember you are funding this lot to travel round the country to chip away at Public Inspectors, not in the name of fair play and planning, but in the name of profit. I reckon there was close to £15k daily rate of of lawyers there.

Also chipping away at Wealden was the planning officer for Eastbourne, who wanted Wealden to build 461 additional houses a year, on top of their proposed 950, because he couldn't fit them in. Eastbourne and the developers said, essentially, Wealden had been wussy in dealing with constraints which they claim limit their possible development to 950 new builds a year.

Still with me ? Wealden said they'd been told by the Highways Agency that the earliest a new offline A27 could be delivered was 2030, and that was a real constraint. Elsewhere in this blog, you'll read that an offline A27 failed all value for money tests UNTIL East Sussex County Council said it was vital to support the South Wealden Growth Area, and that turned the project into one of real financial benefit.

Whoa. At the gofl club meeting, Wealden Council said that, in the view of Highways England, the delivery of an offline A27, in terms of traffic performance "was not an absolute constraint". Eastbourne's helpful planner, echoed that, saying he'd been told by ESCC that the lack of  an offline A27 'was not an absolute constraint on development' . This of course leads us to the world of Alice in Wonderland, where the Highways England business case absolutely relies on the Wealden Local Plan to bolster its value-for-money case for an offline A27.