The plan stretches all the way back to Westminster and Andy Burnham’s housebuilding ambitions, now steered by Angela Rayner, the new Housing Secretary.
Under Labour’s housebuilding blitz, Lewes was set a mandatory housing target to build around 15,000 homes, although this has been lowered to 8,570 because it cannot find enough space to build on.
‘Wholly inappropriate’
But for many in the area, Labour’s dash to build more homes has opened the door to rash decision-making from councils trying to hit these targets.
More than 3,700 people have signed a petition against the Chyngton Field development.
Others fiercely opposing the scheme include the National Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and Seaford town council.
Maria Tomalova, a planning campaigner at CPRE, criticised the proposal as “wholly inappropriate” as it “sits within the rolling landscape of the South Downs National Park”.
James MacCleary, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said residents were hit by “a bolt from the blue” when they realised the council was planning to build homes on the field.
“Seaford doesn’t have a lot of green space. It’s been very valued by the community,” he said.
Resident Tony Bennett, 79, said the whole proposal was “almost unbelievable”. “It doesn’t make any contribution to the housing numbers,” he said. “You’re going to get some quite expensive executive homes. That’s obviously what you’d get, with a view of the Seven Sisters. It’s not going to ease the housing crisis.”
Devolution agenda
The row is unfolding against plans for more devolution from Burnham. He has promised to hand power over housing and regeneration to local leaders such as those in Lewes, arguing that “growth cannot be ordered from the top down”.
It forms part of Labour’s plan to devolve more responsibility to local authorities in the hope it will produce better decisions for the area.
But opponents of the Seaford housing plan say its case illustrates the opposite.
They say that a planning system with mandatory targets puts councils under pressure to build on contentious sites.
Zoe Nicholson, the Green leader of Lewes district council, previously criticised it as a “cynical Westminster exercise in political theatre”.
MacCleary, a former leader of the district council, says the Seaford row exposes a wider contradiction in Labour’s reforms.
“It is a complete fallacy that the Government promotes this idea that councils really have any control over the planning process,” he says.
“They mandate housing targets, they punish councils if they don’t hit them, and if they don’t produce a plan with enough housing in it, the Government simply takes over.”
He adds that Burnham’s promise to devolve power to local authorities is being tested at Chyngton Field.
“Councils are as frustrated as anybody by the situation, and they find themselves feeling utterly powerless,” he says. “If you [work] with communities, we might actually get a few more houses built and a bit less anger from the public.”
While Burnham has yet to share specific details of what his vision for housebuilding entails, there are questions over how far he should trust councils with making those decisions.
This is especially true with the return of Rayner, who championed faster housebuilding and higher mandatory housing targets for councils when she last held the role.
