- Your views on Options A and B, and potential sites for the Neighbourhood Plan will be added to the website over the coming weekend.
- It is hoped that the Draft Neighbourhood Plan will be presented to the Parish Council in November. If the Parish Council agrees, it will then go out for a Public Consultation period of 6 weeks. We will hold another “Open Day” during this period so that you have further opportunities to ask questions and make comment.
- We have four special requests:
- Please give us positive views about sites, as well as any concerns that you may have.
- Please bear in mind that some concerns can be remedied. Measures such as drainage can be put in place to deal with flooding, site-access can be improved by re-siting and so on….
- And please remember that development sprawl will NOT happen! Only sites listed in the Neighbourhood Plan will get the green-light for new housing.
- Please keep consulting our web-page as your reliable and factual source of information.
Thank you – Owen Hydes, Steering Committee Chairman
Nuthurst Neighbourhood Plan 
Can you confirm that public opinion IS being considered when putting forward potential sites?
Yes, it most certainly is!
The Steering Committee has created many opportunities for residents of the Parish to express their views, either orally or in writing. Neighbourhood Planning is a co-operative local endeavour and residents views are crucially important to its success. This is why we have listened to, or read, residents’ views extensively through the General Survey; the Housing Needs Survey; the various Open Day questionnaires; the business peoples’ meeting; the children’s events at St Andrews School; the teenagers event; the landowners presentation meetings; the stakeholders event, for example for those who supply services to the Parish such as water and electricity; … and so on.
However, we are operating within a free-thinking democracy and residents have undoubtedly expressed some differing views at times. Even within settlements residents have expressed divergent views
Additionally we operate under constraints. Horsham District Council (HDC) and the Independent Examiner will certainly require a “sufficient” number of new houses before they will pass our Neighbourhood Plan, but we do not have a figure from HDC to work with. Residents said they wanted 75 or fewer houses over the next 15 years and we are using this as a guide.
So yes, there are some uncertainties and challenges and we have to deal with these. We want our Neighbourhood Plan to pass its examination, otherwise we will have to wait another two years before we can submit another Plan … and we will have wasted the time and efforts of so many good volunteers and residents. We do not want this to happen!
We hope that you can appreciate how hard the task of constructing a Neighbourhood Plan actually is. The Steering Committee has worked long and with great commitment and energy and at the end of the day, hopes that the Plan passes examination and that the vast majority of the residents of the Parish will be happy with the result.