00:00Hi I'm Fenella Maitland-Smith, I'm the chair of the campaign Save West of
00:05Ifield. We are objecting to the Homes England proposal for 3,000 new houses
00:10west of Ifield in Portion District. We're not against housing development and new
00:17housing per se, not at all. In fact we would support the development of more
00:22social housing for Crawley but there's no evidence at all that this development
00:25West of Ifield will deliver any social housing. What we want is the right
00:29houses in the right place and we don't believe that that's what the West of
00:34Ifield will deliver. We're also very concerned that because the Horsham
00:40local plan has been effectively thrown out by the planning inspector recently, the
00:46West of Ifield is no longer allocated into a local plan. That means, strictly
00:51speaking, that should Homes England go forward with a planning application in
00:55the next year or two years even, it would be a speculative application and we don't
01:02believe that it's the role of a government department at all to put
01:05forward speculative applications because they in some senses seem to bypass the
01:11proper planning process and government shouldn't be doing that. So we're here
01:17today and we're encouraging supporters and local residents to come to ask Homes England
01:22as many questions as possible because if they do put forward or bring forward a
01:27planning application then we and our supporters and local residents should be
01:31able to go respond to the planning application with as much information at
01:37their fingertips as possible.
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