Mortgage companies are falling over themselves not to lend us money, competing to increase their rates whilst housing price falls are being led by reductions in the type of town centre flats that are meant to fund our new town centre development. Yet the government continues to pile up increased housing targets that in the current environment house builders won’t be able to afford to build and house buyers won’t be able to afford to buy. The latest diktat from Whitehall are proposals yesterday under the South East Plan for an extra 2,000 houses on top of the 15,100 new houses already required to be built in Mid Sussex in the period until 2026.

What the government doesn’t say is how the infrastructure required by all these new houses, the roads, schools, water supplies and health facilities will be paid for, and with the current housing market, developers may not be able to afford the same level of contributions made towards infrastructure improvements as has been expected in the past.

We need new housing, especially affordable family accommodation, but we need investment in infrastructure before new housing, to resolve some of the existing problems of congestion, poor facilities like sewage and drainage to ensure there is capacity to cope with existing development as well as to provide for new housing, and for the shops and schools to be built at the same time as new developments – not five years after – as happened at Bolnore Village.

We need a district council that is proactive, that plans ahead and can hold developers to account – its no coincidence that Mid Sussex is the only district in the area to get an increase in its housing target – whilst Horsham and Crawley had no increase. The council has been less than proactive in developing its own planning policy, only starting this year to begin drafting its “core strategy” which determines the area’s planning policy – starting years after its neighbours – both Crawley and Horsham finalised their policies in 2007.

Planning policies can play a crucial part in ensuring housing is built to modern mobility and environmental standards, and that new developments are properly designed to minimise their impact, and maximise the benefits they bring to local people. And without updated policies the district is hamstrung in trying to force better standards from developers.

See http://www.midsussex.gov.uk/page.cfm?pageID=3168 for the latest updates on the preparation of the Mid Sussex Core Strategy and how you can be involved when the next round of consultation commences later in the year.