Chichester District Council Reveals Plan To Ease Impact Of Traffic On A27 Bypass

Chichester District Council should soon be adopting a planning document aimed at helping to ease the impact of traffic on the A27 bypass.

Between May and July, 121 people responded to a six-week public consultation about the Supplementary Planning Document (SPD).

On Tuesday (September 3), the results of the consultation were presented to a meeting of the cabinet, and members recommended that the SPD be adopted by the council.

The SPD will provide detailed advice and guidance on the council’s approach when it comes to securing contributions from developers to help ease the traffic issues caused by the building of more and more homes.

While the council has managed to secure more than £10m in contributions since 2016 – with another £9m in the pipeline – it has not been enough for some of the major work needed.

This includes improvements to the Fishbourne, Bognor, Stockbridge and Whyke roundabouts.

This has largely been because of significant cost increases over the past decade, which the council said took the work ‘well beyond the level of funding that has been secured through planning contributions’.

The cost of improving the four junctions is expected to cost between £33.1 million and £53.2 million.

Taking out the money already secured from developers, this leaves a minimum of £13.56 million still to be found.
The new SPD – which will go to the next meeting of the full council for final approval – will replace the previous one, which was adopted in 2016.

It will relate to mitigation outlined in the adopted Local Plan, not the emerging Local Plan.

Cabinet members were told that the document was only guidance – a way for councillors, officers and planning inspectors to interpret the policies in the Local Plan.

Deputy leader Jonathan Brown has long been vocal about his dislike of the national planning system.

He said:

“The planning system is awful and not fit for purpose.

“Documents like this are a very good effort to try and maintain some sort of ability to plan and keep old documents current, despite policies and laws going out of date faster than developments are actually happening.”