CPRE Sussex joins fight against 1,450-house “Cuckstye” scheme

CPRE Sussex will be opposing a planning application to Mid Sussex District Council by Fairfax Developments to build 1,450 new houses on a large farmland site.

The site is on the south side of the A272 between the villages of Cuckfield and Ansty.  The Fairfax Developments’ planning application charmingly describes the  proposal as a “new Garden Community”.  Locals know it as the “Cuckstye” scheme.

The application pre-empts, and appears to subvert, the process currently under way to review and update Mid Sussex’s District Plan, further public consultation on which is expected in the near future. Whilst the current District Plan already allocates sites for substantially all the new housing needed within the District for the rest of this decade, the Review now under way will have to allocate further sites needed for new housing in the next decade. The site on which Fairfax wants to build is, we understand, not considered by MSDC a sustainable site to be allocated for housing as part of that Plan Review.

CPRE Sussex agrees that it is not a sustainable site for such a strategic development: plonking approximately 3,500 new residents in the middle of the countryside, away from the facilities of an urban centre or any public transport hub that they will need in their daily lives isn’t prudent planning.  It just creates the kind of development sprawl into the countryside that runs counter to the cornerstone of national planning policy ever since the second world war, namely that major new development should be focused within and around existing conurbations, not dotted around the countryside wherever developers happen to leverage a few green acres.

CPRE Sussex is working alongside the local communities affected by this scheme, who are all solidly opposed to Fairfax’s scheme.  You can follow their campaign at https://www.saynotocuckstye.co.uk/.