Category Archives: Mayfield

The Mayfield New Town proposal and the LAMBS opposition to it.

There is no music in the nightingale

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A nightingale sang in Mayfield Square
Click on the bird for a full LAMBS report. The BBC has elicited a response from the ecowibble office at Mayfield Market Towns Limited:

We have already employed ecologists to carry out preliminary studies, and the next stage will be to conduct more in-depth ecological studies which we will be consulting on at a later stage. This is all part of the normal planning process and we wouldn’t be allowed to develop without showing that we have looked at our ecological impact.

[Title from Shakespeare, illustration by Henry Stannard]

New planning guidance

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Blot on the landscape
The West Sussex Gazette has a long report. Extracts below:

A highly significant change in the guidance says that councils will no longer have to identify specific sites for development for the last five years of their 15-year plans. The provision was widely seen as unrealistic and was forcing councils to allocate unpopular ‘strategic sites’ for development, like the proposed new Mayfield ‘market town’.

The new guidance also states that infrastructure constraints must be considered in assessing a site’s suitability for development. This addresses a key local concern in West Sussex, where there is a strong feeling that development is allowed without the necessary infrastructure, such as roads and drainage, to support it.

The new planning guidance also addresses another local concern by making clear that emerging local plans should be given weight in decision-making even before they are passed.

The new guidance also encourages brownfield development and clarifies the ‘duty to co-operate’, under which neighbouring councils are required to consult each other on their plans.

Richard Rogers vs Mayfield Market Towns

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22 Parkside Wimbledon, designed by Richard Rogers
The architect Richard Rogers has joined the campaign against Mayfield.

Existing settlements already contain ‘live, work and leisure’; public transport, schools, hospitals, churches, meeting halls and existing social and physical infrastructure. Greenfield land has none of these facilities in place and therefore it will mean that more cars, roads, sewers, etc. will be required which is why it is not environmentally sustainable.

Full report here.

Wealden wins

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Wealden CSLP
The Sussex Express reports:

A consortium of landowners have failed in a High Court bid to tear up Wealden District Council’s housing plans for the next 16 years and force it to go back to the drawing board.

One of the country’s top judges dismissed the challenge brought by the group, known as Ashdown Forest Economic Development LLP, to the Council’s Core Strategy Local Plan (CSLP.)

The group claimed the Council, the South Downs National Park Authority and a Government planning inspector who had cleared it to be adopted had been too cautious and protective of the environment and nearby Ashdown Forest. However, Mr Justice Sales today rejected all of the group’s grounds of complaint.

More details at the link.

Mayfield runoff

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The LAMBS flood gallery
The LAMBS website has another interesting article, this one on the implications of the Mayfield development for the regional hydrology:

“Every time it rains there would be massive floods which could wipe out Shoreham,” says Frank Preston who worked on the river for 30 years, as a Flood Defence Agent for Southern Water Authority. “The extra impervious run-off from houses and roads, that sort of thing, would just overpower the river.”
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John Donaldson, former Operations Manager for the Environment Agency, with 35 years of experience in the water industry, says he was “horrified” when he heard of the plan. “The impact of the drainage system and surface water run-off will be a nightmare,” he says. “We can hardly manage the run-off that we’ve got at the present time. There’d be even greater flooding without doubt – to land, to property, to road systems and transport – everything. The upland catchment already has enough water in the meadows and fields – we cannot take any more water.”
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[Peter Haworth Booth:] “The implications of Mayfield are enormous. I think a lot of houses just won’t be habitable. I don’t know what the quantities of water are but the speed of the run-off is going to cause mega problems from here down to Bramber.”

Read the rest at the LAMBS website.

No spare rail capacity

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Balcombe Viaduct in a 1954 photograph
The LAMBS website has a very interesting post on the (im)possibility of carrying more passengers on the London–Brighton line:

[Mayfield is] a completely unsustainable development from the transport perspective .. You have to remember that the Brighton mainline has only got four lines from London as far as Balcombe Tunnel, which is just South of Crawley. Beyond that it’s a two track railway going down to Brighton and I can see no way of actually widening that section of line. You’ve got a number of obstacles in your way which would have to be addressed because of the undulating way of the countryside.

Much more here.
Update 25th January: Lee Newlyn responds.