It was immensely frustrating to see that Chichester District Council last week gave permission for a staggering fifty new properties in the small village of Kirdford. This is the wrong scale of development in the wrong place. More than 140 letters of objection had been received about concerns on the lack of infrastructure, impact on drainage and threats to nature. I’ve written regularly about the need for more housing for young people in areas like Greater London which is hardly building at all but I am appalled at this decision which flies in the face of local residents views and sits laughably alongside the so-called commitment to climate by the current Chichester administration. I’m sad to say that local councillors bring themselves into disrepute when they behave like this.
Last week I worked to help resolve a broadband outage in Storrington, which hit High Street businesses hard. Many businesses were unable to process card payments or access essential systems since the disruption began last week. I escalated this directly to Openreach’s CEO, stressing that reliable connectivity is not a luxury but a necessity for the community. The necessary work was completed on Friday with full service restored. It was a far from satisfactory situation for anyone to be in and any impacted businesses are welcome to contact me directly: [email protected].
At the time of writing we do not know what is in the budget but I warned the Chancellor last week not to impose more tax on the value of resident’s property. Analysis I did last week showed that more than 40,760 local households in Chichester, Horsham and Arun councils were at risk of swinging increases in Council Tax if the Chancellor were to add a surcharge on the top council tax bands across the three districts to the west of West Sussex. Hitting often elderly people in homes that they have worked all their life to pay for would be morally reprehensible. Even more so when this is a biased and divisive tax paid in the south of England but spent in the north.
