Category Archives: Mayfield
Burn Mayfield down
LAMBS will be lighting 365 torches in their area between 5:00pm and 5:30pm on Sunday 22nd December. Join them to express your support, witness the spectacle, record the event with your camera, appear on Meridian TV, and then make your way to The Royal Oak in Wineham at 7:30pm for mulled wine, mince pies and carol singing.
Updated: 20th December.
A fictional plan
As many readers will know from our recent Mayfield posts, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government appointed an Inspector to decide whether MSDC had met ‘the Duty to Cooperate’ in preparing the District Plan. He decided that they had not and has asked them to withdraw the Plan. This means, in effect, that MSDC no longer has a District Plan and thus lacks any acceptable framework on which to base current planning decisions. Here are some excerpts from the conclusions to the Inspector’s report (PDF):
The evidence does not enable me to conclude that .. MSDC gave satisfactory consideration to meeting the unmet development needs (in particular in terms of housing) of nearby local planning authorities. The requirements of paragraphs 178 to 181 of the National Planning Policy Framework have not been met .. I must conclude that the Duty to Cooperate has not been met .. there is also the risk that the Plan could be found to be not sound.
There may be consequences in terms of the Council being unable to meet its 5 year housing land supply requirement. Nevertheless this cannot outweigh the need for effective joint working. I must advise the Council to withdraw the Plan .. This also means that the Mid Sussex Community Infrastructure Levy: Draft Charging Schedule will have to be withdrawn because there will be no up-to-date relevant Plan for the area.
The implications of the Inspector’s finding are in no way restricted to the area to the immediate north of Blackstone.
“Grotesque and wholly unwanted”
Update, 4th December: (i) the BBC reports on the debate here; (ii) the inspector has ruled against MSDC, details here.
Update, 8th December: a lengthy and informative report from the West Sussex Gazette.
Mayfield Adjournment Debate
The Mid Sussex Times reports that:
Mid Sussex MP Nicholas Soames has secured an Adjournment Debate in the House of Commons on the ‘Proposed Mayfield new town in West Sussex’. .. The Commons debate will be held on Tuesday, December 3. Mr Soames’ parliamentary neighbour, Nick Herbert, the MP for Arundel and South Downs, will be contributing to the debate. Planning Minister, Nick Boles MP, will respond. The debate is due to take place between 11am and 11.30am.
“Localism flounders in Sussex”
Update 28th November: the new, improved LAMBS website.
The Mayfield Horror
The first public screening on Tuesday proved to be a sell-out: “so many turned up at Oaklands, Haywards Heath, .. that some had to be seated in an overspill room .. and listen on a sound link” (Mid Sussex Times). BBC Radio Sussex coverage of the screening can be found here (top story — interviews with several of the stars) and here. Fans will have to wait a couple of weeks to find out whether this slasher — arguably the best since Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — is to be allowed out on general release.
GJMG
Update 16th November: The Mid Sussex Leader has published a review (PDF).
Mayfield versus MSDC
If you access the PDF of the Mayfield Towns submission and open the ‘document properties’ box in Adobe Reader, you will see that the original file title of the submission is Examination of the Shepway Core Strategy. Shepway is on the Kent coast, not in Mid Sussex. Presumably, for the lawyers and consultants that feed at the bottom of this particular trough, the prose remains the same. It is just the place names that need to be changed. [One of the two entities claiming credit for preparing the document is called ‘Shared Intelligence’. But ‘Copy & Paste’ or ‘Find & Replace’ might have been more appropriate corporate monikers.]
GJMG
Drowning LAMBS
