May 31, 2024

Welcome to this week's blog. As always, thank you for sparing the time to have a read. Elections continue to be in the news: to vote at the General Election you must be registered by midnight on Tuesday 18 June 2024. Sadly, The Joseph Rowntree Projects latest report on UK Poverty points out it is unacceptably high and tackling it requires a coherent plan, with creative policies, from whomever forms the next government. 

Meetings are affected by purdah during the General Election campaign so keep checking the calendar links at the end of this post as they are subject to change; however there is CDC’s Standards Committee on Tuesday and Full WSCC this coming Friday. We suspect Full WSCC may be quite theatrical in view of the General Election. Watch CDC’s public meetings here, and Full WSCC here.

The ward work continues, for instance this week Donna sat in on a meeting I had looking at STC’s Staff Handbook, and I reciprocated with a couple she had relating to the Manhood Classics. With Sarah Sharp’s continued absence I have picked up some housing work in Chichester South, while Donna continues to deal with her County casework.

I have heard back about the question I asked at Full CDC about which parishes in the Harbour’s National Landscape area have made neighbourhood plans. You can see this here. I have also been told that once the submitted local plan has successfully completed examination and been adopted by Members, Officers will be looking to parishes that have been allocated a housing number in it to be making progress towards either a new or updated neighbourhood plan to deliver the identified housing numbers. 

Sunday sees the start of a new UK train timetable, while Monday sees the start of Volunteer’s Week and the conclusion of the dig in Priory Park, Chichester. This is a collaboration between Chichester and District Archaeology Society and CDC. The public are welcome to come along and watch, particularly tomorrow (1 June) and learn about the remains of a military causeway or bridge that would have led to the city’s Norman castle they have uncovered. Tuesday is the end of Garden Wildlife Week so it is appropriate for us to share this advice from the RSPB on helping birds near you.

Last week we shared the concern in places like Devon and Surrey about Cryptosporidium, where residents regularly travel to and suggested you read the UKHSA’s information on how you can avoid it in the water or on the farm. You may not have realised that the Government was warned last year about it by their own inspectorate, who felt that after shortages it represented the greatest threat to our drinking water supply. At school, which is Thames Water, I take my own drinking water, double boil the kettle and use hand sanitiser as well as the supplied soap. 

Returning to this week, Thursday is D-day 80. Selsey’s civic commemoration, as requested by the Pageant Master, Bruno Peek CVO OBE OPR, begins at East Beach at 8.30pm (or in the Selsey Centee if it is raining) with a beacon lit at 9.15pm. You can learn more about these historic times via one of West Sussex Library Service’s online resources. West Sussex Record Office in Chichester has a free D-Day display in its reception and search room. This is WSCC’s information about celebrations across our County. The Novium has also produced a display to mark this important anniversary.

As we told you last week, Selsey endured more air raids than any other place in Sussex and was one of two crucial assembly points for the Mulberry Harbours. The day after the D-Day beach landings, they were towed across the Channel. After these giant structures mysteriously departed, local people were still unaware that they had been living next to one of the important assembly points for the artificial harbours, in preparation for the Normandy invasion. Just off the coast of Selsey, in ten metres of water, is one that broke its back and sank in the storm on the night before D-Day. 80 years on, the ‘Outer Mulberry’ rests with the wrecks of a WW2 Infantry Landing Craft and a Cuckoo Rescue Float, in a triangular configuration which has Scheduled Monument Status. 

Next Saturday, June 8, sees the first of a series of free open-air painting sessions, delivered as part of the Culture Spark programme, by professional artists. It takes place in the CIty’s Bishop’s Palace Gardens from 10am to 4pm. Midhurst hosts a second session at Woolbeding Gardens on Friday 21 June from 11am to 4pm before a final workshop is run at Petworth House in Petworth on Saturday 29 June from 11am to 4pm. To find out more and register to attend one of the workshops, please email.

This week’s interesting reads are all from Zoe, the health study I joined during Covid. As we start going out more, this could be a good time to make some minor tweaks to improve your health in the longer term: -

• Caring for your heart may prevent dementia; 

• Beans, why they’re great and how to eat more;

• And, reducing inflammation with your diet.

Sadly, young people are at increasing risk of financial exploitation, which is where a person or group takes advantage of a child (up to the age of 18 years old) to encourage or force them into financial activity that benefits the exploiter. It can take many forms, using different types of currency (including crypto), and often involves fraud and money laundering through in-person and digital banking. 

It can happen at cashpoints, on social media and gaming platforms, in retail settings, where young people are made to return high value goods with stolen receipts, or to shoplift, and through different ‘relationships’ including parents, carers, and wider family members and when young people are made to believe they’re in a consensual romantic relationship and then become manipulated into holding money on behalf of their partners. As The Children’s Society explains, they are affected both online and offline and it can quickly escalate from sharing bank details, into the threat of sexual abuse or being made to hold or move drugs.

In happier news, the SDNP has become the first National Park in the UK to open up a formal scheme for voluntary biodiversity gain to the private sector – meaning that firms of any size across England can invest in high-ethic, effective nature recovery.

Residents are being asked for their views on the proposed locations of several new electric vehicle (EV) chargepoints in Crawley, Horsham, and Mid Sussex. The proposed locations have been selected because either a member of the public has made a request, or the location has been identified as an area with limited off-road parking and a lack of nearby public chargepoints. The proposals form part of the latest round of installations from the West Sussex Chargepoint Network, a partnership between West Sussex County Council, its district and borough partners in Adur, Arun, Chichester, Crawley, Horsham, Mid Sussex, and Worthing, and Connected Kerb. So far 215 chargepoints have been installed across our County. Have your say on the locations here.

We mentioned last week that part of the A27 Chichester Bypass is the 12th slowest stretch in the UK. The draft A27 Chichester Bypass Mitigation SPD Version 2 consultation is now running until July 11. It responds to representations received to the previous consultation of autumn 2023, as well as to the most recent evidence base concerning the impact of new development in the south of our District, and the mitigation required to address this. On adoption, it will replace the approach set out within paragraphs 4.46 – 4.54 of the Planning Obligations & Affordable Housing SPD, adopted in 2016. The new SPD approach will appropriately address the impact that new development is having on the A27. Reference copies will be available to view at the council offices in Chichester, the South Downs Centre in Midhurst, or Chichester, Selsey, Petworth, Midhurst and Southbourne libraries.  

Finally: - 

• Report potholes to WSCC

• Housing Health & Safety

• Warmer Homes UK

• Suicide in Sussex

• Domestic Abuse

• Supporting You

• WSCC Meetings

• CDC Meetings

As always, from the whole Team, stay safe.

Tim