A woman in Whitehawk is upset that she and her neighbours have been rebuffed by the council as it prepares to earmark land for housing on a sensitive site.
The residents wanted to tell councillors in person why they should protect a butterfly bank, but they are not being allowed to speak.
Swanborough Drive resident Angela Al-Zeind gathered support from her community to try to remove a former playground site from City Plan Part Two - Brighton and Hove City Council’s 10-year strategic planning blueprint.
The City Plan is due to go before a meeting of the full council for adoption today after a public consultation on the final draft started in May.
In recent years, residents’ groups have fought to remove parts of the “urban fringe” – green spaces around the edge of Brighton and Hove – from the City Plan.
There have been campaigns to protect the Whitehawk Nature Reserve and sites in Benfield Valley, Patcham and Coldean.
One succeeded, bringing protection for land in Patcham – next to Horsdean Recreation Ground – which was removed from the plan by a Government planning inspector.
Ms Al-Zeind said that when she approached people to protect the green space in Whitehawk, many responded by saying that the council did not care what they thought.
One of her frustrations is that a “Planning For Real” session called “In Ten Years’ Time Swanborough Drive Will Be …” took place yesterday, which she fears was too late.
And the session was due to take place from 10am to 1pm – a time when Ms Al-Zeind and many of her neighbours are at work.
She said: “There is an evening one but it is presenting what was done in the morning, so what’s the point? They haven’t listened to us because we can’t participate.
“It’s very frustrating that it’s not accessible.
“What am I supposed to do? Take a day off?”
When reaching out to the community to see how people felt about the proposals to build between up to 39 flats on the nature reserve, many residents said that they had no idea about the plans.
She wanted to lead a deputation to the council asking for the Swanborough Drive site to be removed from the City Plan.
But the council turned down her request because the City Plan had “completed its consultation and public examination” – and the vote was simply to adopt it in its entirety or reject it.
She said: “People didn’t have the opportunity to say anything because they didn’t know it was happening – and they didn’t know they could oppose it.
“Everyone in Whitehawk feels like the council doesn’t care about them.
“They consider them to be the poor and overlooked ones no one cares about.
“That’s a horrible sense of community to feel the council doesn’t care.
“This just confirmed it because there’s no point in fighting because they won’t listen to us anyway.”
The council said: “The City Plan Part Two has been through four stages of public consultation and a public examination.
“A government inspector has concluded that, with some recommended changes, it satisfies all legal requirements, complies with national planning policy and provides an appropriate basis for the planning of the city.
“The council can now make no further changes to the plan.
“At the full council meeting on Thursday 20 October we must agree to either accept it in full as it stands, with the inspector’s recommended changes, or reject it.
“Residents are, of course, free to lobby their councillors on whether or not to adopt the plan.
“But we are not in a position to accept deputations to our full council meeting calling for it to be amended.
“When the City Plan Part One was examined in 2013, the inspector instructed the council to plan much more positively to meet as much of the city’s full housing need as possible and ‘to leave no stone unturned’.
“The 13,200 new homes minimum housing target set out in the Part One plan only meets 44 per cent of the city’s fully assessed housing need (which was assessed at the time as 30,000 in 2015).
“This means that some sites on the urban fringe will need to be allocated through the City Plan Part Two.
“The proposed sites account for 7 per cent of the city’s urban fringe. This means that the vast majority of these spaces will continue to be strongly protected.
“By allocating these sites and setting out clear requirements, the plan can ensure that development delivers homes the city needs.
“This includes genuinely affordable and family-sized homes that meet ambitious sustainability standards. It also ensures that developments provide new open space.
“Without such a plan, we risk losing local control of the ability to shape and manage new development and to protect non-allocated urban fringe and green space.”
READ MORE: New plan identifies seven “strategic” sites for housing
The full council meeting is due to start at 4.30pm at Hove Town Hall.
The meeting is also scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
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