Lewes MP angers district councillors after calling housing development plan 'out-of-date'

Council leader and Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate James MacCleary said Ms Caulfield was ‘reciting misleading nonsense’, when she made the comments about the Lewes District Council’s planning policies to a House of Commons Committee last week.

Councillor MacCleary said: “It has become exhausting but predictable to see Lewes’ Conservative MP standing up and reciting misleading nonsense like this about local issues like housing and planning.

“We have tried so hard to engage Maria Caulfield in a positive dialogue on the new Local Plan, but she has instead chosen time and again to try and turn it into a political game.”

Ms Caulfield told the parliamentary committee that since the Lib Dems and Green Party had taken control of the council in 2019, the district had been ‘inundated’ with applications from developers on a daily basis looking to ‘seize the opportunity’ to target every greenfield site in the constituency to put in their housing development.

The Conservative MP told the committee: “We had a very good system of a local plan in place, nearly every town and parish in the district of Lewes had neighbourhood plans, which were voted on by local people, put together by local parish councillors.

"We were delivering our housing numbers in the right place for the right type of accommodation, enabling older people to stay in their communities by downsizing and young families start of their lives in their communities with starter homes.

“Since 2019, the inaction of our local council squabbling over housing numbers but meanwhile not having a local plan in place means that our communities, parishes and town councils are being left to face the consequences.”

Ms Caulfield also told the committee that the houses being built under the plan on current sites were not affordable for local families and not suitable for older residents looking to downsize.

Green and Lib Dem councillors believe the council's current local plan is out-of-date because of the government’s rule changes and not because of inaction of the local authority.

The council says according to the government’s formula for calculating housing need in the Lewes district, the number of homes that should be built each year is 783.

Mr McCleary said: “It is essential that council officers leave no stone unturned in putting together our new plan as Maria Caulfield’s government has told us that we must now build over 700 houses a year.

"The only way we can push back against these sky high targets is to produce a thorough and rigorous new plan that makes the case for a much lower target.”

The Lewes MP said it was ‘nonsense’ that 700 homes a year need to be built across the Lewes District, stating the number included the allocation for the national park, which is allocated separately, and claimed the closer number was 385.

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Ms Caulfield told SussexWorld: “I have been overwhelmed by the response to my speech in parliament from local residents who just want to get this resolved and protect our local green spaces.

“The leader of the council has never contacted me on the local plan but I am happy to work with everyone and anyone to get this right for residents.”