Mid Sussex Council needs to stop giving small scale housing developers a free ride
New housing sites can often occur when larger gardens or other small sites are redeveloped, these "windfall" housing sites provide several hundred new houses a year, yet our Conservative District Council has failed to ensure developers of these sites pay any contribution to local infrastructure. Normally new housing developments are required to contribute towards the cost of new community infrastructure (known as s106 contributions) to help pay for improvements to roads, schools, libraries, community facilities and social housing. Yet Mid Sussex currently excludes new developments of under 15 houses of having to contribute towards new social housing, and developments of five or less houses do not have to make any contribution to local infrastructure (unlike some other local councils). This gives an incentive to developers to redevelop single back gardens such as Folders Lane in Burgess Hill with piece meal development that avoids them having to make any contribution - despite providing dwellings in this road
