Mid Sussex District Plan – next steps

The examination in public opens on Tuesday, 24 February 2026 with a new Inspector.

The District Plan 2021 – 2039 was formally submitted to the Planning Inspectorate on Monday 8 July 2024.

Since the initial examination in public, the Secretary of State has appointed a new Inspector, Jonathan Bore MRTPI, to hold an independent examination of the Mid Sussex District Plan Review. starting on Tuesday 24 February 2026.

The following matters are being examined:

The housing requirement, including local housing need and unmet needs

Housing supply and headroom

Homes to meet the needs of all the community

Meeting business and industrial needs

The Spatial Strategy

Site allocations

The new Inspector has asked Mid Sussex Council to add text supporting the idea that Grampian conditions can be used to ensure that water and sewage infrastructure is in place before developments are occupied. This was a key ask from the CPRE Sussex sewerage infrastructure campaign.

CPRE Sussex will be participating in the Plan examination process.  We say that the high level of environmental constraints means that developers’ siren calls for levels of housing expansion beyond the target proposed in the Plan should be resisted.  But we are challenging the Plan’s spatial strategy focus on new development on greenfield sites – 94% of new homes on sites proposed for allocation would be greenfield homes – at the expense of densifying the main towns and supporting organic growth in the District’s other towns and villages.

We have also made a detailed submission calling for the Plan to require a higher proportion of affordable and social housing within the overall housing mix, especially in more rural parts of the District, whose vibrancy depends on being able to offer local people(and their families) providing decent local places to live on local wages.  We say that addressing that need is a greater priority than building masses of large market housing in the countryside for the better off.  The current District Plan’s 30% affordables target has failed to deliver enough affordable homes to meet growing local need; retaining that unambitious target, which is that the Council proposes, will exacerbate the problem.

Our detailed submissions are at: www.midsussex.gov.uk/planning-building/mid-sussex-district-plan/district-plan-review-examination/ 

Find out more about the forthcoming examination in public at: www.midsussex.gov.uk/planning-building/mid-sussex-district-plan/district-plan-review-examination/