Why is the Cuck-Stye (Ansty farms) site being proposed?

Central Government has adopted a housing target of 300,000 houses per year over a 15-year period and each planning authority must take a share of this. 

Mid Sussex’s share has been calculated as 1,119 units and the Council have sought sites to fulfil this obligation. Fairfax, engaged by the Council, have developed a plan to build 1,600+ houses on the Ansty farms site and this has been included in the draft District Plan released in February 2022.

Our view

We strongly dispute the basis used in the housing target calculation and believe that a revised basis using more recent data from the Office of National Statistics eliminate most of this need.  

We also fundamentally believe that the Ansty Farms site is the wrong development in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The site is unsustainable in terms of environmental impact, local infrastructure and existing planning policy.  

Both Ansty and Cuckfield have in place neighbourhood plans which were endorsed by local referendums under the localism act. These plans are not some NIMBY declarations but rather the comprehensive vision of how local people wish to see their communities sustainably develop. In the case of Ansty, there was full cooperation with the Northern Arc development that will lead to 3 500 houses being built in the Parish, whilst in the village of Ansty itself 4 new estates have been built over the last 10 years that has more than doubled the size of the settlement. Cuckfield has adopted a similar open approach.

Unlike these developments, the Ansty Farms proposal (which has been considered and rejected previously) is a top down imposition that is motivated by chasing arbitrary housing targets rather than fulfilling a real local need.