LETTER: Crazy paving over our locality

Perhaps a Maths genius out there, perhaps from the council,could help me with the arithmetic on the proposed North Horsham development:
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Liberty state this will create 4,000 jobs. So if, improbably, the average 1,000 unemployed people in Horsham are all found employment 3,000 workers will still need to be “imported” into Horsham.

Now a large number of those 3,000 would wish to live near their work thus occupying the 2,600 homes planned.

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Assuming 75 per cent of these houses has one child this will require school places for 1,950 pupils. There would be no benefit to Horsham of new schools as one would surmise that they would be resident in the North Horsham ghetto. That is until these pupils take their A levels. Is there sufficient provision for this? Even liberty in their advertisement state: “with pressure already on school places.”

Building schools to be be largely occupied by incoming population is not a net benefit to Horsham.

600 car parking spaces at the proposed, but unlikely, station. Would that be multi-storey or yet more acreage covered for parking?

What does up to 30 per cent affordable housing mean? Would it actually mean the 17 per cent as has happened at Liberty’s development at Kings Hill, in Kent. (This figure is shown as a “boast” on the Liberty website the actual wording is: “the revised proposals have reduced the proportion of affordable housing from 40 per cent of 975 new dwellings (390 affordable dwellings) to 17.5 per cent of 635 new dwellings (112 affordable dwellings).”

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Thousands of square feet of office space in Horsham are being converted into flats. The reason for building a 400,000 square foot business park on greenfields is what?

What percentage of the occupancy of the business park will have been brought about by a town elsewhere in the UK losing a significant local employer? It is a fair guess that a large percentage of the incoming businesses will have relocated out of towns in the UK leaving behind empty business parks and local unemployment.

Sucking in yet more people into an already crowded area; no net benefit to Horsham. Horsham will also be doing a direct disservice to those towns from where businesses will relocate from.

Even though my view over the hills will be destroyed I am not a nimby. If 2,600 houses would help current residents of Horsham that, although I would prefer it elsewhere, would be fine with me. It is a net increase in Horsham’s housing stock..

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It is the short-sighted council and government policy of developing more and more in the South East rather than ensuring that areas with significant unemployment are made sufficiently attractive that balanced development and opportunity is spread around the country.

With one of the lowest unemployment rates in the UK does Horsham really need to contribute to this crazed paving over of our already saturated locality?

Or maybe the mathematicians at HDC can show us how this adds up to a sane proposal..

M.Pelss

New Moorhead Drive, Horsham

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