Following the vote in favour of the masterplan on the 11th November 2016, the Chairman writes:
I think it was a score draw. We did not get the final goal but I believe this was the best outcome for Chichester. We have achieved an enormous amount.
- We have a time line that we can measure the developers by and hopefully hold them to it.
- We have reduced the construction traffic to 19 months instead of 84+ months (If the timeline works!)
- We have established that there is a credible and vocal opposition/monitoring group who will be breathing down the necks of the developers and the officers.
I know that Linden homes have played slow and loose with Greylingwell, but I am not aware that there is any group like ours [i.e. FLAWED] operating there. Also, I hope that the presence of Miller homes may have a moderating effect on Linden – was yesterday’s young man from Miller? He was better than anything Linden produced last time (not difficult!).
We must now look forward. I am not sure how the next stages work but presumably the reserved matters are agreed by the officers and passed by the members on the nod, unless anyone puts in a red card. We must rely on our councillors to monitor the situation and keep the rest of us informed. We don’t want to hold them up, but if there are any contentious issues then [the cross RA traffic group] FLAWED should meet again to decide a strategy.
Southern Access
The route of the Southern Road is important to Westgate. It was said that this has now been agreed, so I have written to Dominic Smith at WSCC and asked him to share it with me. In his document of 12th August 2016, section 20.3 the first bullet point is “Creation of a steering group to take forward preliminary designs to detail design and delivery” Louise Goldsmith has kindly offered to chair this and we must make sure that we are represented and that it actually meets and has some influence.
We must let things settle down now, but keep alert and be prepared to act if necessary.
