Maria Caulfield, Member of Parliament for Lewes, has welcomed the decision of Lewes District Council Planning Officers to deem the ‘Eton New Town’ on North Barnes Farm to be “Not deliverable of developable” and will not be included in the new local plan.
The proposal from Eton College is to build over 3000 houses near to the small village of East Chiltington. The plans have been dealt a blow after the decision by planning officers to not put the site forward for consultation as part of the ongoing work on a new local plan for Lewes District.
Lewes District Council has not had a local plan in place since 2021, when the previous plan expired. This has meant that developers have been successful in getting housing developments approved that they may not have been able to if Lewes District had kept the plan in date.
The Lewes MP Maria Caulfield long campaigned for the previously Liberal Democrat-Green controlled council to get a local plan in place to prevent the assault on our green spaces we saw under their administration.
After much pressure from Maria and local campaigners such as the group ‘Don’t Urbanise the Downs’ the council has finally ruled out the ‘Eton New Town’ in their local plan process.
Maria Caulfield MP said:
“I very much welcome this decision by the planning officers at Lewes District Council, I have been supporting local residents in opposing this development from the start and I’m glad that Lewes District Council has listened to residents and have finally ruled out this unsuitable development from their local plan.”
“Although this is a good step, we need to continue the fight as our green spaces are under attack from parties such as the Liberal Democrats, who want to increase housing targets by an additional 80,000 homes a year, and the Labour Party who have said they will bulldoze local opposition to build new towns and only recently a Sussex Labour MP said that Ringmer and Plumpton would be ‘good opportunities’ for more development.”
“We’ve seen the damage to our green spaces under a Labour/Lib Dem council, it is truly worrying what could happen under a Labour/Lib Dem government”