The Midhurst and Petworth Observer has an interesting report from a Chichester local plan hearing:

Ian Ellis, director of Southern Planning Practice, [said]

The [South Downs] National Park will do the least it possibly can to meet its objectively-assessed housing need, whatever that is going to turn out to be. It will expect a proportion of its objectively-assessed housing need is met by other authorities. My experience is when they go forward with the local plan, they will be .. saying ‘can you accommodate X per cent because we don’t want to accommodate it here and we don’t have to’.

In response, the SDNPA’s strategic planning lead Lucy Howard said the plan was yet to finalise its decisions: “The authority does need to consider the purpose and duty of a national park,” she said, highlighting its ‘landscape sensitiviy’ .. the SDNPA was in the ‘early stages’ of working on its strategic housing market assessment. “We do realise that if necessary we will be approaching neighbouring local planning authorities, but we’re simply not at that stage yet”.