No mention of costs of using charging points for electric cars

Presumably the 80 per cent of owners who charge their cars at home have to foot the bill for the electricity, but the picture illustrating the article (pages 14-15) doesn’t appear to show anywhere to feed in coins and/or notes – or present credit/debit cards.

Are the rest of us subsidising the ‘sparkies’? Presumably a ‘yes’ if it’s the local councils who are footing the bills for both the installation and the supply costs?

One letter also caught my eye. Pollution at the ‘McDonalds’ roundabout features yet again, with the food outlet being blamed for their customers clogging up the approach roads.

But whenever I need to visit the shops in Burgess Hill (such as are left...) and drive from the Keymer area of Hassocks, I have to make a detour of some 200 metres via the roundabout to get back to the entry to the Waitrose car park.

Much the same applies on visits to the out-of-town B&Q store, where a much longer out-and-back via the next roundabout adds a couple of miles to my trip.

Did the planners give even a passing thought to the one-off costs of smaller roundabouts allowing direct access to the town centre car park, and to B&Q (and the adjacent Pet&Vet store), as compared to the everlasting additional pollution at both sites? Unless, of course, we all buy electric cars...

Elsewhere (page 18) the conversion of the former Hassocks PO Sorting Office to a shop and ten new homes, with provision for ten parking places, shows that someone at Planning HQ realises that ten homes are extremely likely to need ten spaces.

And even if two or three homes can or could manage without, others will very likely have more than one vehicle (and how about built-in Charging Points while they’re about it!).

But would someone at the council offices slip down the corridor and have a word with the Hassocks Down Side Estate Planners who are proposing to have a private company build 500 dwellings on the green fields between Ockley Lane and the railway down line.

Presumably there will be private parking for the houses (and external outlets for charging their ‘sparkies’), but some at least will need to venture out occasionally, and wish to park in the village, or even dare to think of taking the train up to London, or down to the coast.

The less said about the parking at the station the better: you need to be up well before the lark to have a chance of finding a space, and as far as I’m aware there are absolutely no plans to do anything about it.

The ‘rear-of-Budgens’ car park already increasingly resembles a ‘Dodgems’ fairground attraction, with cars circling warily waiting for someone to pull out.

Spaces which can be accessed from both ends (those which face the row of garages) add to the fun when two cars are each half in and a stand-off ensues. Maybe a Turf Accountant (or ‘Bookie’) should set up on site to take bets on the winners (if only he - or she - could be sure of finding a space).

Paul King

Fir Tree Way,

Hassocks