When is a village not a village? When its soul has been sold for a bypass and new houses have turned it into something more like a suburban estate.

Ashington, on the A24 north of Worthing, was once a pleasant village that became increasingly plagued by traffic on the road from London and Horsham.

Now the traffic has gone and the main street is reasonably quiet. But the traffic is thundering away nearby on the new bypass and there is new housing all over the place, which looks alien in the beautiful West Sussex countryside.

Many acres of land have been taken for the new houses and the new road. There is not much public transport to the village and the nearest station is well out of reach. Extra traffic from the new homes is already going on to the A24. Even worse, a lot of it is also travelling on the road towards Billingshurst and the once peaceful lane to Wiston.

Looking at this sad sight on Monday, I was assailed by the dreadful realisation that this is the shape of things to come in West Sussex. The steady creep of new homes has become a gallop thanks to the Government's nonsensical decision to allow thousands more houses each year in the county.

I also went to Henfield that day. From the north, the village character has been eroded by a large and unsympathetic new housing development.

Things are little better in East Sussex, where 2,000 new houses are planned each year.

Before the last war, when planning was largely uncontrolled, much of the Sussex coastline was ruined with developments such as Peacehaven and the awful maritime sprawl that leaves few green spaces all the way between Worthing and Littlehampton. After the war, housing moved on to the Downs in estates such as Hangleton in Hove and Woodingdean in Brighton.

Now the Downs and coast are largely protected from large-scale housing. There is unlikely to be much more either in areas such as the Ashdown Forest or the tongue of downland in north Sussex around Fernhurst.

That only leaves lowland Sussex available to take the inexorable demands by the Government for more housing and its character is changing rapidly. Small towns such as Uckfield, Hailsham and Billingshurst have become suburban sprawls while more homes are stretching into all sorts of villages. Meanwhile, Crawley and Burgess Hill are simply unable to stop growing.

Roads are becoming choked, with the main arteries from London often unable to cope, while there is enormous pressure for damaging east-west links. Country lanes are being used by motorists anxious to avoid the jams.

Few of the people in these new houses are local. They are from London and other large towns seeking a pleasant rural lifestyle. Meanwhile, Sussex people on low wages who cannot afford high mortgages are often forced to go elsewhere.

What makes it deeply depressing is that there is no sign of an end to this madness. Current projections cover the next decade or so, but it will not stop after that as the demand continues and successive Governments are too uncaring or vacillating to take any action.

Within 20 years, the Weald could be as covered with concrete as the coast is today. Sadly, Sussex seems completely unable to stop this rural tragedy from unfolding remorselessly.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.