Save West of Ifield chair Fenella Maitland-Smith, said the campaign was not opposed to new housing and supported the idea of more social housing for Crawley. But she questioned whether the Homes England proposals would deliver such homes.
She added: “What we want is the right houses in the right place, and we don’t believe that that’s what West of Ifield will deliver.”
She added: “What we want is the right houses in the right place, and we don’t believe that that’s what West of Ifield will deliver.”
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi I'm Fenella Maitland-Smith, I'm the chair of the campaign Save West of
00:05Ifield. We are objecting to the Homes England proposal for 3,000 new houses
00:10west of Ifield in Portion District. We're not against housing development and new
00:17housing per se, not at all. In fact we would support the development of more
00:22social housing for Crawley but there's no evidence at all that this development
00:25West of Ifield will deliver any social housing. What we want is the right
00:29houses in the right place and we don't believe that that's what the West of
00:34Ifield will deliver. We're also very concerned that because the Horsham
00:40local plan has been effectively thrown out by the planning inspector recently, the
00:46West of Ifield is no longer allocated into a local plan. That means, strictly
00:51speaking, that should Homes England go forward with a planning application in
00:55the next year or two years even, it would be a speculative application and we don't
01:02believe that it's the role of a government department at all to put
01:05forward speculative applications because they in some senses seem to bypass the
01:11proper planning process and government shouldn't be doing that. So we're here
01:17today and we're encouraging supporters and local residents to come to ask Homes England
01:22as many questions as possible because if they do put forward or bring forward a
01:27planning application then we and our supporters and local residents should be
01:31able to go respond to the planning application with as much information at
01:37their fingertips as possible.