VIDEO: Bitter taste after battle against developers is lost

Wates Developments got the green light for 230 new homes on 11 of the 14.5 hectares of fields it has earmarked on the edge of Lindfield, which protractors say will now claw away at the strategic gap between the village, Haywards Heath, Scaynes Hill and Walstead.

The District Planning Committee voted seven to four to allow the estate off Gravelye Lane and Lyoth Lane, overruling the people’s wishes thanks to a planning system that one councillor described as leaving them ‘between a rock and a hard place’.

Almost without exception the committee’s members expressed sympathy with objectors, which included more than 1,020 letters, two petitions of more than 500 signatures and objections from Lindfield Rural Parish Council, Lindfield Parish Council, Haywards Heath Town Council, Lindfield Preservation Society and MP Nicholas Soames.

Yet the district council’s lack of a five year land supply, no adopted district plan, and the government’s National Planning Policy, which dictates a presumption in favour of ‘sustainable’ development, forced the committee’s hand.

See full report in this week’s Mid Sussex Times on Thursday