Angmering affordable housing removed

Angmering Parish Council has accused developers of trying to ‘wriggle’ out of providing affordable housing for the Manor Nursery Garden Centre development.

At an Arun District Council planning meeting on September 6, developers for 32 homes Roffey Homes, had an application to remove affordable housing provision on the site approved.

An Angmering Parish Councillor called the application a ‘mechanism to wriggle out of’ providing affordable housing for the development, calling it a national planning policy failure, and that developers had ‘never’ planned on providing affordable housing knowing they could get the provision removed.

The Parish Council objected to the application, along with 56 residents, stating a need for affordable housing specifically in Angmering.

Roffey’s Managing Director said he appreciated it was not ideal’, saying development costs had gone up ‘five fold’, so affordable housing was not viable on the site, but would be provided elsewhere to make up for the 10 homes planned to be on the site.

The development will also see £200,000 spent on Angmering high street, according to the director.

The removal also saw a late stage review mechanism added to the section 106 agreement between the council and developer, stating if conditions change on the development, the uplift in forecasted profits from it will be given to the council’s affordable housing provision.

Currently a profit margin of 17.5 per cent was set by the council as an acceptable limit for those profits.

A similar application was made in 2022, being refused by the council as profits were still considered high enough at the time to sustain an affordable housing provision.