Rookwood Park Response to HDC

The Rookwood Park Owners Association has published a summary of their response to HDC’s proposal to build on Rookwood.:

1. “Green Space”

The local plan calls for the protection of green spaces, and the promotion of health and wellbeing.

It promises to expand on leisure facilities, with a pledge to maintain Horsham's reputation as a great place to live.

And it promises to reduce carbon emissions and improve biodiversity by a minimum of 10%.

We recognise you are making good efforts to take expert advice, but however much you try and protect “sensitive corridors” an urbanised development on this scale seems to be unnecessary, destructive, developer driven, and out of character for this council. This development will reduce the green space available and will not achieve the stated objective, nor meet the needs of the existing or extended communities.

Very importantly any loss of established green space is irreversible and increases carbon emissions, counter to the vision of the local plan.

2. “Urbanisation” of Horsham

Whilst we fully understand the duty to build the homes that society needs, they should not simply be those that are the easiest for the planners, or the most profitable for the developers.

And surely it must be wrong to make irreversible decisions during these Covid dominated times, and whilst the UK birth rate is in sharp decline e.g. a 12.2%pa decrease since the most recent peak in 2012. Source https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2019

Is it not sufficient that this area of Horsham is already taking more than its fair share of development with the two vast developments on either side of the A24 contributing about 2,000 new homes? They are in addition to the new build that is just getting under way along the A264 towards Crawley, with 3,000 new homes, and comes at a time of great uncertainty for airport related employment.

We are already witnessing significantly increased levels of congestion, noise and environmental pollution and, putting further demands on essential services and infrastructure such as doctors’ surgeries, hospitals, and medical facilities, policing, general open areas, leisure areas, schools, community centres. This can only get worse.

3. Increased risk of flooding

Developing the land at Rookwood has serious implications for flooding, both locally and beyond.

The North of Horsham Development is expected to cause more flooding problems once their extensive development gets underway and fears about flooding from new development were flagged to other recent developments.

Adding 800 new homes to any part of this land would change another important open green space, into a housing estate, and consequently will add a significantly greater volume of water that would overwhelm the local river.

The areas downstream cannot handle the increased volumes of water that will be a consequence of the run off from development on Rookwood.

Meanwhile the Warnham Millpond is classified as a reservoir, and HDC has already been forced to mitigate risks of serious flooding by putting in a dam and holding area for when water levels are too high. To relieve pressure, the sluice gates are opened into the river and there is flooding all along the river through to the new Highwood Estate, and Hills Farm Lane. And the nature reserve still floods in spite of the dam!

This risk of self-inflicted flooding, across a wide area of Horsham homes and businesses MUST not be ignored. We can offer a lot more detail on this matter, upon request, but witness the dual carriageway by the Kilnbrook Vale development which was closed when it became flooded in January.

Once again we must stress that the decisions you make now, that reduce the local green space and create further damaging floods cannot be reversed.

In summary, we urge you all, as caretakers of our community and environment to reject pressure from central government, developers, or financiers at this time.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Heeley – Chair on behalf of the Rookwood Park Owners Association residents