Mid Sussex DC needs to wake up to climate change

The draft Haywards Heath Town Centre Masterplan fails to plan for climate change. It’s time for a re-think.

Mid Sussex District Council has missed the opportunity to develop a forward thinking, transformative strategic Town Centre Masterplan to encourage and lead the required change towards a zero carbon, healthy, safer and environmentally friendly town centre.

Those objectives are all entirely compatible with maintaining the town’s economic vitality. Indeed, making Haywards Heath a more pleasurable, healthy town to live and work will benefit its economy.

Neither the draft Masterplan nor its accompanying Strategic Environmental Assessment Screening Report makes a single reference to planning for climate change or transport decarbonisation, or to reducing greenhouse gas emissions or air pollution or noise. These are all fundamental to creating a better place over the next decade for people to live and work in, and to visit.  A plan that does not have those as core stated objectives, with policies to give effect to them, does not serve local residents (or the planet) well.

CPRE Sussex challenges Mid Sussex District Council to put the current draft on hold; to consult more widely; and to come back with a revised plan that marries economic vitality of the town with a more healthy, lower carbon, environment.

Read:

Letter to Editor Mid Sussex Times 16.11.2020

For proposed objectives for a revised plan and detailed comments, see: CPRE Sussex comments on the consultation draft Masterplan for Haywards Heath town centre 27.11.2020