Save West of Ifield (SWOI) have formally responded to the Horsham District Council Local Plan

The Save West of Ifield (SWOI) campaign has logged a formal response to the Horsham District Council (HDC) Local Plan consultation, which closed on Friday 1st March. The Local Plan designates an area west of Ifield as suitable for building 3000 new houses on Crawley's boundary, as well as a multi lane road, a business centre, a travellers site and even an 80 bedroom hotel, putting enormous pressure on Crawley's (already struggling) infrastructure and services and destroying its last remaining rural fringe and Ifield Golf Course

The SWOI submission covers a large number of topics which, in the opinion of the campaign committee and their professional advisors, demonstrate why the West of Ifield (WOI) site is not suitable for this development and why it should be removed from the HDC Plan. These include transport infrastructure, heritage and landscaping, biodiversity, water and sewage issues, house-building targets, Gatwick aircraft noise, air pollution, the loss of Ifield Golf course and additional pressure on local health services. These submissions can be seen on the Save West of Ifield website.

A large number of SWOI supporters have responded to the consultation with their objections. Now that the consultation has closed the next step will be for the Local Plan to be considered by a Planning Inspector appointed by the government.

Fenella Maitland-Smith, chair of SWOI, thanked campaign supporters: ‘Everyone that managed to submit an objection on-line deserves a huge thank you – the Horsham Council system can only be described as crazily over-complicated! It was a full-time job for Cathy Durrant to help everyone through this.

“The SWOI committee and supporters have worked tirelessly to put together technical submissions on a wide range of topics, much of which could not have been achieved without the generous donations from supporters over the past year or so, which allowed us to pay for invaluable professional advice in key areas.

“We’re now looking forward to the next battle – possibly a planning application from Homes England in the summer. And then the Inspector’s Examination hearings in the autumn. We're ready for the fight - confident that the West of ifield proposal is not viable, and not sound in planning terms.”