Mid Sussex Update March 2026

The perception of Mid Sussex as a distinctive rural district is gradually being eroded, making all the more pressing the task for CPRE Sussex and all lovers of the area to fight to conserve everything that still makes Mid Sussex a special place to call home.

We don’t typically report to you at this quarter of the year.  However, the reorganisation of local government in Sussex has temporarily stalled and the examination of Mid Sussex District Council’s proposed new District Plan – the most significant local planning document affecting all resident’s lives for years to come – has reached an advanced stage.  These merit feedback to you, from our long-term planning volunteer and Mid Sussex expert, Michael Brown.

Local Government reorganisation in Sussex

The Government was due to decide in March between a number of alternative structures proposed for future single tier local government across Sussex: deciding how many new authorities there would be and which bits of Sussex would fall under the mother-wing of each new authority.

Instead the Government has announced that it doesn’t like any of the proposals put forward and is now intending to consult on a different structure of its own devising.  In West Sussex, this would see two new authorities but with a different configuration from that which the districts and boroughs themselves wanted. One authority would cover East Sussex, but with some coastal parts of Lewes District surrendered to an expanded Brighton & Hove authority – supposedly to provide Brighton & Hove with more land and hence greater opportunity to grow itself out of its considerable housing supply shortage.

Given that this structure emanates from the Government department that determines the future structure of the Local Government reorganisation that it has mandated, it is a fair guess that it will turn out to be the winning bid – however unwelcome it will probably be with those who not only know Sussex better than Whitehall bureaucrats do, but also wanted a different outcome.  It will be particularly unpopular in those parts of Lewes District that will be shunted across to Brighton so that Brighton can build more houses and flats on their almost non-existent green spaces.

CPRE Sussex has been concerned from the outset that this reorganisation exercise could, if mishandled, end up increasing the unhealthy remoteness between local people and those who should be serving them.  The latest structure proposal from on high adds a new worry: the inherent expectation that the new Brighton & Hove Authority will have to build, build, build is liable to expose not only Peacehaven, Saltdean and Falmer to those pressures, but also the South Downs National Park.  We have already seen how the imminent new National Planning Policy Framework will erode the protections hitherto afforded to our protected landscapes.  The pressure will be on in Brighton and elsewhere to expose those new lacunae.

Voting on 7 May for councillors for the new authorities is going to be interesting when no-one knows which authority many of those councillors will belong to!

Mid Sussex’s new draft District Plan moves another step forward

The unconscionable time that it has taken to progress the required replacement of Mid Sussex District Council’s out-of-date 2018 District Plan is demonstrated by the fiction that, once it is adopted, it will be deemed to have been in effect since April 2021; and, in theory, it will be the governing strategic document ruling planning affairs in Mid Sussex until 2040, though in practice it will be reviewed and re-written well before then after the local government reforms have come into effect.

The main public examination hearings before the Planning Inspectorate of MSDC’s proposed plan have now taken place, and the Inspector has published his interim conclusions into the Plan’s soundness. In brief:

• The Inspector requires the Council to plan on the basis of delivering between 1,200 and 1,300 dwellings per annum (dpa) rather than to the 1,088 dpa proposed by the Council. The actual figure will be decided later. Much of the increase will be intended to go towards alleviating the shortfall in housing delivery anticipated by the authorities in Crawley and Brighton.
• MSDC’s draft Plan allocates 26 sites around the District where they hope that most of the 1,088 dpa that its plan envisages would be built. The increase in the housing target demanded by the Planning Inspector means that the District will have to absorb an additional 3,500 – 4,000 homes between now and 2040.  The Inspector has tasked MSDC to identify sites where those extra houses can go, including re-examining the suitability of sites hitherto rejected.
• The Inspector has endorsed all the allocations proposed in Mid Sussex’s draft Plan. Some of them may see their proposed development capacity (i.e. the number of homes built on them) increased. The Inspector rejected (without explanation) CPRE Sussex’s and others’ powerful evidence that MSDC’s fantasy of creating a “self-sustaining neighbourhood community” through strategic development of a series of linked rural sites between Sayers Common and Albourne was undeliverable in practice given its size and relative remoteness from Burgess Hill.
• The Inspector did however, to a degree, buy into our argument that the Plan’s spatial strategy needed to require increased housing density within existing urban centres, albeit that he did not adopt our suggestion that the Plan’s soundness required it to set a minimum urban housing density target.
• Particularly disappointing from CPRE Sussex’s standpoint was the Inspector’s disinterest in exploring the possibility of requiring the Plan to increase the percentage of affordable housing that developers of all but the smallest sites should be required to build. Providing opportunities for local people to live within communities where they work (often on modest wages) is a social imperative, and vital to the economic health of our rural villages and towns in particular.  There is a significant and growing unmet need in Mid Sussex for social and affordable housing (especially for rent) that the new Plan will in all probability exacerbate.  We thought that we had presented a compelling case that the 30% affordable homes target proposed in the Plan was not only out of kilter with the ambitions of our neighbouring planning authorities (40% being more typical) but that MSDC’s ability to deliver on its overall housing target would not be prejudiced by setting a more demanding target to help meet the District’s evident needs for more affordable housing.  For a CPRE Sussex article looking at this issue in more depth click here. Our written submission to the Planning Inspector can be viewed on the Plan Examination page of MSDC’s website.
• The Inspector has been equally impervious to suggestions to bolster the Plan’s environmental credentials and improve the District’s contribution to the country’s climate change and ecological commitments. The examination has been all about housing and very little else.

MSDC will spend the next few weeks coming up with a long list, followed by a short list of additional sites that it proposes to add to the sites allocation list in the Plan.  Subject to the Inspector being happy with that list (and possibly reconvening his examination hearings to discuss any particularly contentious sites), MSDC will bring forward these extra sites as so-called Major Modifications to its draft Plan.  Those Major Modifications, and other already agreed between MSDC and the Inspector, will then be the subject of a further round of public consultation (probably later in the summer.) Subsequently, there will be a final hearing into any contentious Major Modifications followed by a final report from the Inspector hopefully confirming that he is satisfied that the Plan (as modified) is sound and fit for adoption before the year is out (and in time to beat the abolition of MSDC as a local authority!) The plan will outlast its creator.

We would love to be able to tell you that the new Plan will be a great Plan. It isn’t. It is the victim of Government imposed dogma on housing targets, and it lacks ambition on the provision of affordable housing and enhancing the District’s very special environment.  But a plan we must have, and this is what it will almost certainly look like.  The perception of Mid Sussex as a distinctive rural district is gradually being eroded, making all the more pressing the task for CPRE Sussex and all lovers of the area to fight to conserve everything that still makes Mid Sussex a special place to call home.