New 101-home development just north of LIttlehampton Academy approved

An application for 101 new homes on a site just north of Littlehampton Academy, was approved by Arun District Council’s special planning committee on Wednesday (June 28).

The plans include a patch of land to the east of the site which will be left as open space.

The committee’s discussion focused on a perceived lack of infrastructure for the town being delivered alongside new housing developments

The most vocal of these was Mike Northeast (Lab, Courtwick with Toddington) who took issue with the proposed section 106 agreement between the council and developer, used to mitigate the impact of new homes on the community.

He said: ‘Here’s just another [set of] 106s going out of the town having precious little benefit to the people who live here or the new people that are going to come here.

‘If you look at the primary education provision, all it’s allowing is additional facilities at River Beach Academy. Now there are three or four other schools that are possibly within the catchment area of that site that will be getting nothing out of it.

‘It’s saying to me that the provision for the kids [on the new estate] will be provided for kids outside of Littlehampton.”

Richard Bower (Con, East Preston) said the planning policy committee, of which he is a member, would be looking to take the issue of section 106 agreements’ delivery and effectiveness and that the problem was ‘wider than just this site’.

He said: ‘There’s no point in us giving them permission if they are just going to sit on it for the next three years – we do not want another 90 [homes] short of this site, we need to get these things built.’

Cllr Bower said it was a ‘Catch-22 situation’ when putting together section 106 agreements, as too many restrictions would scare developers away, and too few would allow services and amenities in the area to erode or buckle under the weight of more new residents.

Neil Crowther, Arun’s group head of planning, said money from the developers in a 106 agreement was to reduce the impact of the proposed development itself, not to be ‘syphoned off’ to the wider community.