Representation on the Main Modifications to the Mid Sussex District Plan 2021–2040
The fundamental issue raised by these Main Modifications is whether it is appropriate or sustainable for Mid Sussex to be required, at this late stage of the plan-making process, to accommodate a substantially increased housing requirement and to identify additional sites to meet it as quickly as has been demanded by the Planning Inspectorate.
In this representation, I therefore have chosen not to make representations on individual sites. To do so would risk obscuring this fundamental issue and could be interpreted as me supporting some of the sites unless I objected to all.
My submission is focused on the premise, scale and consequences of the additional sites being brought forward in their entirety. The question for the Inspector should not simply be which of these sites can be made to work individually, but whether the cumulative additional growth being imposed on Mid Sussex can be accommodated sustainably, with the infrastructure, water supply, transport capacity, schools and environmental mitigation required by the District Plan itself.
I am deeply concerned that as a result of directions from the Planning Inspectorate, Mid Sussex District Council has been given no choice other than to consider a collection of sub-standard sites to meet increased housing targets. It is important to note that the sites now included in the Main Modifications are not new sites; they were all rejected during the original plan-making process. This process began in 2021, was published as a draft in January 2022, and reviewed once again in 2023 before reaching cross party agreement by the councillors of Mid Sussex District Council in December 2023.
There is some irony that, had the original proposal been progressed by the Planning Inspectorate in 2024/25 then the government would have been progressing with its stated objective of delivering plan-led housing, rather than holding up this process for years and missing out on the opportunity to deliver the affordable homes that this government says that it wishes to be built.
The Council undertook an extensive and evidence-led plan-making process. It has assessed housing sites, consulted communities, worked with infrastructure providers and neighbouring authorities, and developed a plan which sought to meet Mid Sussex's own housing need while also making a contribution towards wider unmet need. At no time has Mid Sussex sought to avoid its responsibility to provide housing.
Indeed, Mid Sussex has a strong record of housing delivery, with more than 1,000 homes built annually in recent years and around 30% of those homes being affordable.
The Council has therefore demonstrated that it is willing and able to deliver substantial housing growth when that growth is planned properly and supported by the necessary infrastructure.
The current position is fundamentally different.
Following the Examination hearings, the Inspector has required Mid Sussex to accommodate a substantially higher housing requirement, including a contribution towards a significant proportion of the unmet housing need arising from neighbouring areas including Crawley and Brighton & Hove. The Council has subsequently had to identify and assess additional sites within a very compressed timetable.
This has placed the Council in an exceptionally difficult position. Sites which had previously been considered for inclusion in the draft District Plan and not selected, due to their unsuitability, have had to be revisited, without the time normally available to undertake the full process of consultation, infrastructure assessment, engagement with communities and infrastructure providers, and iterative consideration of alternatives that would ordinarily inform the preparation of a District Plan.
The resulting question is therefore not "which additional site in the Main Modifications should be allowed and which should be removed?" It is whether the additional housing requirement itself can be demonstrated to be deliverable and sustainable in Mid Sussex. I do not believe that it can.
1. Infrastructure must support growth
The District Plan establishes a clear principle that development should be supported by the infrastructure necessary to create sustainable communities.
Policy DPI1 requires development to be supported by and coordinated with the delivery and maintenance of infrastructure and/or mitigation measures necessary to meet the additional need arising from development. It recognises the cumulative effects of development on existing infrastructure, and looks to protect this, and requires an extensive range of infrastructure to be provided at the appropriate time.
This principle is particularly important given the circumstances in which these additional sites have been identified.
The Council's Infrastructure Delivery Plan identifies a wide range of infrastructure requirements associated with growth, including transport, education, health, utilities, water, wastewater, green infrastructure and environmental mitigation. Infrastructure is not therefore a secondary consideration to be addressed once housing numbers have been established. It is fundamental to whether that growth is sustainable.
These concerns go directly to whether the Main Modifications are justified and effective. It is not enough to demonstrate that additional housing capacity exists in numerical terms; there must also be proportionate evidence that the resulting strategy is deliverable, including the infrastructure and mitigation upon which that growth depends.
The concern is that the Inspector's increased housing requirement has effectively reversed this relationship. Rather than infrastructure capacity helping to determine the scale and location of sustainable growth, the Council has first been given a substantially higher housing requirement and then asked to find sites capable of accommodating it.
That is not the infrastructure-led planning approach envisaged by the District Plan.
2. Transport, schools and health infrastructure
The ability of Mid Sussex to accommodate additional growth also depends upon the capacity of its transport networks and essential public services.
Policy DPT1 requires development generating significant movement to demonstrate how necessary sustainable transport infrastructure will accompany development. It seeks to maximise opportunities for walking, cycling and public transport and requires the transport implications of development to be properly assessed. It also requires that development that creates liveable communities that embody the 20-minute neighbourhood principle. The additional housing cannot therefore be considered simply in terms of whether individual sites have a theoretical highway solution. The Inspector should consider the cumulative impact of thousands of additional homes on already pressured roads, junctions and public transport networks, and whether the infrastructure required to mitigate those impacts can realistically be funded and delivered alongside development. There must also be sufficiently robust evidence identifying the necessary interventions, their funding, the responsible delivery bodies and the timescales for their provision and furthermore the Main Modifications, particularly in the south of the District where all of the sites are outside the existing built up boundary of settlements, are much less likely to meet the 20-minute neighbourhood principle as they are more distant from existing amenities and infrastructure.
The same need to plan for additional capacity applies to schools and other essential public services.
The Infrastructure Delivery Plan identifies early years, primary, secondary, sixth form and special educational needs provision as infrastructure requiring assessment as the population grows. Additional housing generates additional demand for school places and other public services.
Health infrastructure must also form part of the assessment of additional growth. The Infrastructure Delivery Plan identifies primary and secondary healthcare, mental health, dental and social care provision among the services affected by population growth. The Main Modifications should therefore demonstrate that the scale and location of the additional housing has been considered alongside the capacity of existing healthcare services and the ability of relevant providers to plan for and deliver any additional provision that will be required.
It is not sufficient to say that contributions can eventually be sought from developers. The relevant question is whether there is sufficient capacity, and a credible mechanism and timetable for providing additional capacity, appropriately phased alongside the occupation of new development, to ensure that the new communities created by the additional housing are properly served.
3. Water supply is an urgent and unresolved concern
Water is perhaps the clearest example of why the additional housing requirement cannot be considered separately from infrastructure capacity.
Mid Sussex is in an area of significant water stress and residents have experienced serious and prolonged problems with their water supply. South East Water has faced repeated supply failures and widespread disruption, while residents have also experienced prolonged restrictions on water use.
These are not theoretical future risks.
In July 2026, I raised the issue directly with the Prime Minister following the decision to send approximately 1,200 pupils home from Downlands Community School in Hassocks because the school had no water. I asked whether water companies should be required to demonstrate that they have the capacity to provide a reliable water supply before new housing is approved.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the seriousness of the situation and agreed that customers should be able to expect reliable and resilient water services.
Against that background, it is extremely difficult to understand how Mid Sussex can simply be required to accommodate thousands of additional homes without a much clearer demonstration that the water infrastructure can reliably support the resulting population.
The District Plan itself recognises this issue. Policy DPI7 requires adequate water supply infrastructure to serve the development and the provision of necessary improvements ahead of the development’s occupation where existing capacity is insufficient. The relevant question is therefore whether the evidence supporting the Main Modifications demonstrates sufficient water supply capacity and identifies any necessary network improvements, together with how and when those improvements will be delivered. Given the scale of the additional growth proposed, reliance on future infrastructure provision must be supported by a clear and credible delivery plan.
These policies must mean something in practice. The pressures on our water supply therefore raise serious questions as to whether the Main Modifications are supported by sufficient evidence demonstrating that the additional growth can be accommodated reliably.
Wastewater and sewerage capacity must also be considered separately from the availability of a potable water supply. Where additional growth requires improvements to wastewater networks or treatment infrastructure, there should be clear evidence that the necessary capacity can be provided and that any required improvements can be delivered in step with development.
There is also an important distinction between water neutrality as an environmental mitigation measure and the basic physical capacity of the water network.
4. Water neutrality
The Main Modifications remove the previous DPS5 Water Neutrality policy following Natural England’s withdrawal of its Water Neutrality Position Statement for the Sussex North Water Resource Zone in October 2025. That withdrawal followed changes to the abstraction licence arrangements intended to ensure that development would not adversely affect the protected Arun Valley habitats.
The removal of that requirement therefore addresses a specific environmental constraint associated with abstraction and the protected habitats. It does not, however, demonstrate that South East Water has sufficient infrastructure capacity or network resilience to provide a reliable supply to the additional population proposed through the Main Modifications.
Water neutrality, ecological impacts and water supply capacity are separate but related issues. The removal of the former should not be taken as evidence that the latter has been resolved.
Indeed, the July 2026 Habitats Regulations Assessment acknowledges that removing the previous DPS5 Water Neutrality policy makes the water-efficiency requirements for new development less intensive than under the previous version of the Plan.
The submitted District Plan had sought to respond proactively to the water constraints facing the area through Policy DPS5. Within the Sussex North Water Resource Zone, the policy required new residential development to achieve a water efficiency standard of no more than 85 litres of mains-supplied water per person per day, alongside measures to offset remaining demand.
The removal of that policy following a change in the regulatory position does not remove the separate need to demonstrate that sufficient water supply capacity and network resilience exist to support the additional growth now proposed.
It is entirely reasonable for a local planning authority to seek ambitious measures to reduce water consumption and protect environmentally sensitive water resources. It is also reasonable to expect that the basic infrastructure required to provide a reliable water supply will exist before thousands of additional homes are occupied.
The current evidence does not provide sufficient confidence on this point.
5. Flood risk and drainage
Flood risk and drainage are further examples of infrastructure constraints that must be properly considered alongside additional growth. Policy DPS4 requires development to follow a sequential risk-based approach, to remain safe throughout its lifetime and not to increase the risk of flooding elsewhere. Particular attention is also required in areas which have experienced flooding in the past, with development expected to seek reductions in existing run-off rates.
The policy further requires Sustainable Drainage Systems for developments of 10 dwellings or more unless demonstrated to be inappropriate, together with arrangements for their long-term maintenance and management.
Given the scale of the additional housing proposed through the Main Modifications, there must therefore be sufficient evidence that development can be accommodated without increasing flood risk elsewhere and that the drainage infrastructure and mitigation required to support it can be delivered and maintained over the lifetime of the development.
This should include consideration of whether the cumulative increase in development and impermeable surfaces can be accommodated by existing and proposed drainage systems, rather than relying solely on site-specific drainage solutions.
6. Nature and environmental capacity
The additional housing also needs to be considered in the context of the environmental capacity of Mid Sussex.
The District Plan contains policies designed to protect biodiversity, green infrastructure, trees and woodland, ensuring that development does not cause unacceptable environmental harm.
The Habitats Regulations Assessment for the Main Modifications identifies a number of potential impact pathways, including recreational pressure, atmospheric pollution and water-related effects.
Importantly, the HRA identifies that six of the additional sites fall within the 7km Ashdown Forest zone of influence, comprising approximately 390 dwellings, and identifies the need for additional Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace to mitigate recreational impacts.
This is important to the deliverability of the additional housing itself. The modified Ashdown Forest policy requires development likely to have an adverse effect on the Special Protection Area (SPA) or the Special Area of Conservation (SAC), either alone or in combination with other development, to demonstrate that adequate measures are in place to avoid or mitigate those effects. Where the HRA relies upon Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace (SANG) or other mitigation to enable development to proceed, the availability and delivery of that mitigation is therefore integral to demonstrating that the additional growth can be accommodated.
The conclusion that mitigation is possible is dependent upon that mitigation being provided in the right location and at the right scale alongside housing delivery.
It is not sufficient simply to identify that mitigation may be possible in principle. There must be confidence that the mitigation required can be secured and funded, will be available at the point at which it is needed, and can be managed and monitored for the necessary period.
Again, this illustrates why the additional housing requirement cannot simply be viewed as a numerical exercise. Environmental mitigation is infrastructure. If the necessary green infrastructure cannot be delivered alongside the housing, then the environmental capacity required to accommodate that growth has not been demonstrated.
The same principle applies to biodiversity and nature recovery more generally.
The Main Modifications recognise that environmental harm should first be avoided, then mitigated, with compensation used only as a last resort. Where off-site mitigation is relied upon, there should also be clear evidence that its location is ecologically appropriate and that the measures proposed are capable of effectively addressing the impacts they are intended to mitigate.
The government quite rightly talks about the importance of nature recovery and environmental improvement. Yet local authorities must have sufficient scope within the planning system to require development to contribute properly to those objectives. It is concerning that, during this examination, attempts by the Council to strengthen protections for water and the environment have been constrained by requirements to align local policy with the national baseline.
There is a contradiction here. Local communities are being asked to accept substantially more development, while their local authority is simultaneously being given less ability to require the additional environmental measures needed to make that development sustainable.
The relevant question for the Inspector is therefore not simply whether environmental impacts have been identified, but whether the Main Modifications are supported by sufficient evidence that the avoidance, mitigation and green infrastructure upon which the additional growth depends are effective and deliverable.
7. Coalescence
Mid Sussex comprises towns and villages with distinct character and proud individual identities. There is already significant pressure in maintaining their independence in the Mid Sussex constituency in the south of the District, which has taken the bulk of the housing allocated in previous planning cycles particularly in Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath, Hassocks and Hurstpierpoint. The Draft Plan 2021-2040 places further pressure on these settlements plus Albourne, Sayers Common, and Bolney, and it is with coalescence in mind that policy DPC2: Preventing Coalescence and DPC1: Protection and Enhancement of the Countryside look to balance the impact of housing on the edge of settlements to ensure the provision of housing and the risks of coalescence are carefully considered.
Alongside the Draft Plan, the speculative application at Ansty Farm commonly referred to as ‘Cuckstye’ which was turned down by the Planning Committee at Mid Sussex District Council, has now been called in for determination by the Secretary of State. Should this site be approved, this will risk coalescence of Cuckfield and Ansty.
It is in this context that the Main Modifications should be understood. While the sites included in the Draft Plan looked to carefully balance the need for housing with the risks of coalescence, and received cross-party support as a result, the additional sites included in the Main Modifications in the south of the District (Mid Sussex constituency) are all outside the Existing Built Up Area Boundary for each settlement. In some cases, these additional sites lead to almost complete coalescence between neighbouring settlements and contravene policy DPC2.
8. A planning system that has put the Council in an impossible position
There is also a fundamental issue of fairness and democratic accountability.
Mid Sussex District Council has not refused to plan for housing. It has spent years undertaking the work required to prepare a District Plan. Sites have been assessed, evidence commissioned, communities consulted, infrastructure requirements evaluated and political agreement built around the resulting strategy.
At every turn, when successive Conservative and Labour governments have moved the goal posts, Mid Sussex District Council has endeavoured to meet those demands. This has incurred considerable cost to the taxpayer, sapped officer resource, and has been counterproductive to the government’s stated goal of delivering plan-led housing at scale.
It is now being asked, at the end of that process, to accommodate a substantially increased housing requirement and to identify additional sites at very short notice.
That creates a particularly difficult position for the Council. There has simply not been the same opportunity to undertake the comprehensive process of consultation and assessment that would normally accompany the preparation of a plan of this scale.
This is not a criticism of the Council for failing to find better sites. It is a consequence of the timing and circumstances in which the Council has been required to find additional sites at all.
There is a wider political lesson here.
The government has set ambitious housing targets and has changed the national planning framework to pursue them. Those targets may be understandable given the shortage of housing, particularly genuinely affordable housing. But increasing housing requirements does not, by itself, solve the underlying problems of the developer-led planning system.
If local authorities that have planned carefully and delivered housing are repeatedly required to revise their plans during examination, while infrastructure providers are not simultaneously required to provide the infrastructure necessary to support that growth, public confidence in the planning system will inevitably suffer.
The result risks being precisely the opposite of the locally led, plan-led system that national planning policy claims to support.
Mid Sussex should not be penalised because neighbouring authorities have unmet need, nor should it be required to absorb additional growth without proper consideration of whether its infrastructure and environment can support it.
9. The voice of local residents
In my experience as both the Member of Parliament and a former district councillor, people in Mid Sussex have always engaged thoughtfully with the planning process. Over the last fifteen years they have formed Neighbourhood Plans giving up many hours of their time on a voluntary basis. When asked, they have engaged with planning consultations, and they have considered carefully the need to provide housing.
It is extremely regrettable that the goodwill and community consent for parish and town led neighbourhood planning that I witnessed during the 2010s has been dismantled by diktats from central government that have ridden roughshod over any notion of community led plan making.
The support of district councillors for the original version of the Draft District Plan was hard won. It followed several years of work and formal and informal consultation. Mid Sussex District Council has consulted with its residents on the Draft Plan 2021-2040 and the plan put forward for examination received cross-party support from councillors representing those residents.
The post-examination increase in housing targets that has led to this hasty Main Modifications process severely risks undermining confidence in the local planning process because it is evident that the sites added as Main Modifications have had to be pushed through in a rush by the Council in order to meet the Inspector’s requirements without time for the full assessment that the sites in the original draft have been through.
Furthermore, the rapid timescales have meant that although the Inspector said there were now no ‘showstoppers’, meaning that sites within the High Weald National Landscape could now be considered for development, it was not realistic for these sites to come forward in the short time available because for many years the development sector had worked under the assumption that development in this part of the District was out of scope. Developers therefore do not have sufficiently advanced proposals that could meet housing need in this area. This leads to, once again, significant housing pressure being placed on the south of the District with over half of the additional housing proposed in the Main Modifications being located here despite the Inspector opening up the National Landscape for development.
This has meant that residents in the south of the District have a deep sense of unfairness which I fully understand. The proposals outlined in the Main Modifications have been thrust upon them with short timescales, and they therefore disproportionately affect communities living outside the National Landscape despite the Inspector saying that development should be considered here.
Residents are now in the invidious position of having to object to individual sites in the Main Modifications thereby being forced intro trading off one site against another, thus implying that some are less acceptable than others, when in reality all of the sites in the Main Modifications were originally considered unsuitable for inclusion in the Draft Plan. Furthermore, as each site is likely to have both opponents and proponents, this consultation could have the effect of cancelling out objections that are valid. The Main Modifications should not be accepted in their entirety purely because there is disagreement from respondents on which sites are acceptable or not.
Conclusion
I therefore object to the Main Modifications insofar as they arise from, and give effect to, the substantially increased housing requirement imposed during the examination.
This representation is not intended to express support for any of the individual additional sites, nor to invite the Inspector to determine which of those sites should be preferred over others. The absence of a site-specific objection here should not be interpreted as an acceptance that any particular site is suitable for development.
This is because my concern is more fundamental. The additional sites are being brought forward because the housing requirement has been increased at a very late stage of the plan-making process. The Inspector should therefore consider whether the cumulative consequences of that additional requirement can genuinely be accommodated in accordance with the principles and policies of the District Plan.
In particular, there must be clear and robust evidence that the additional growth can be supported by:
- reliable and adequate water supply and wastewater infrastructure;
- sufficient school, health, transport and other essential infrastructure;
- transport networks capable of accommodating the cumulative additional demand;
- appropriate and deliverable biodiversity, green infrastructure and environmental mitigation; and
- a level of community engagement and infrastructure planning commensurate with the scale of growth being proposed.
The District Plan has been developed on the principle that development should be sustainable and infrastructure-led. That principle should not be set aside simply because the housing requirement has been increased at the end of the examination.
Mid Sussex District Council has done what a responsible planning authority should do: it has planned for housing, assessed sites, engaged with its communities and infrastructure providers, and sought to produce a sustainable and deliverable District Plan.
It should not now be placed under pressure to accept additional growth without the same level of evidence and planning that underpinned the Plan in the first place.
The issue is therefore not whether one additional site is preferable to another. The issue is whether the additional housing requirement itself can be delivered sustainably, with the infrastructure and environmental capacity necessary to support it. On the evidence currently available, that has not been demonstrated.