Call for Independent Rookwood Inquiry
The letter below:
Was published in the West Sussex County Times on Thursday 22nd April 2021.
Questions whether the HDC Cabinet’s behaviour over Rookwood represents acceptable behaviour by our elected representatives.
Calls for an independent inquiry to establish whether or not proper political, financial and planning processes were followed by the Cabinet and Council Officers.
Letter
Dear Editor,
Rookwood is one of the most commercially valuable assets that Horsham District Council holds on behalf of the District’s residents. If sold for housing, it is expected to raise £40M, although £20M of this must be given away to the previous landowner because of a legal covenant established when the land was purchased in 1986.
Since 2016, about a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money has been spent on consultants for the Rookwood development, in addition to a substantial commitment of Council Officer time. All of this is to promote the sale of Rookwood at half price. How is this good asset stewardship?
The Rookwood project is being driven solely by the Council’s Cabinet, who directed work on this project for three years without public consultation or full Council knowledge. It now seems clear that the Cabinet has pre-determined that it will sell this £40M asset and secretly assigned a huge budget and substantial Council resources to make this happen.
The full Council has never been given the opportunity to discuss or vote on disposing of the asset. In place of a vote on the future of Rookwood, the Cabinet is only giving Councillors a vote on the “Local Plan” as a whole. This covers many policy areas and Councillors can only either accept or reject the entire plan; with no opportunity to express a singular, independent, view on Rookwood.
The Cabinet has evaded seeking prior approval to dispose of this £40M asset and has included the site in the Local Plan, on the assumption that it will get retrospective approval to sell at a later date. This is riding roughshod over democratic norms and is behaviour more often to be found in an autocracy or totalitarian state.
Horsham District residents deserve better government than this!
I now call for an independent inquiry to determine: 1) how and why the Cabinet secretly spent about a quarter of a million pounds, over four years, to create and promote the Rookwood development proposal, 2) whether selling Rookwood at half price is good asset stewardship and 3) whether proper political and planning processes have been followed by the Cabinet and Council Officers.
Since all strategic site developers must establish the deliverability of their site to HDC’s Strategic Planning team, Rookwood should now be removed from the Local Plan because the full Council, as landowner, has not established that it will sell the land. Any other strategic site where this was the case would be omitted from the Local Plan. Why has Rookwood’s bar apparently been set lower than for other sites?
Looking to the future, the Council should explore broader options for the site such as a long-term lease to a golf management company that will deliver improvements to the golf course, greater public access and community utility.
Peter Simpson
