Well done to all the campaigners who worked so hard, peacefully and persuasively, to save the Shoreham poplar tree threatened with destruction writes Councillor Jeremy Gardner, St Mary’s councillor and a member of Adur planning committee. 

Adur’s planning committee this week decided the tree will survive and a new large flat block will be built.

In March 2022, as a member of the planning committee, I voted against proposals for 171 flats up to nine storeys high on the Shoreham former civic centre site between Ham Road and Brighton Road. This would have seen the poplar next to the Duke of Wellington pub felled to make way for the development. The proposal was, after a packed audience was asked to leave the meeting room by committee chair Councillor Stephen Chipp, agreed as a result of Councillor Chipp’s casting vote.

There followed the Shoreham Poplar Front campaign to save the tree. This led to the revised plan which went to Adur Council’s planning committee this week. The committee decision saved the tree. It also means 159 flats will be built on the site.

I voted against the original plan for the development in 2022 because of its inappropriate size for the site and the lack of infrastructure needed to support developments that will include more than 1,000 flats along Brighton Road. In almost 20 months since that meeting, we haven’t progressed an inch when it comes to improved public transport, cycle lanes, school places, new GP consulting rooms or sewage systems that meet the needs of the community.

The revised plan saves the tree but a large development just 70 metres from the Shoreham conservation area has been agreed. It will dwarf neighbouring buildings.

Fifty three of the 159 flats will offer social rents and will be available to people on the council waiting list. A development of just 53 rental flats would have suited that site rather than this much larger development.

There are lessons to be learnt in the long evolution of this development. There is something about less haste. The impression given at the March 2022 meeting was that this had to go through because of a deadline on Homes England funding that would allow more so-called affordable homes to be included. Today that agreement is still there, yet:

• the views of local people on the importance of the tree were not taken into account until after a decision had been made
• concerns that the Duke of Wellington pub would be threatened as a music venue because of possible complaints from residents of the flats were not sufficiently taken into account. We could have avoided worries about the future of the Wellie, the employment of solicitors, a preaction judicial letter, if live sound testing had been carried out in 2022, rather than simply a desk top exercise. It has now been carried out and it looks like agreement will be reached to the satisfaction of the pub and developer.

We can do better. We need a council that informs, involves, listens to and works with the community.

 I voted for the revised proposal for this site. It was better than the 2022 proposal but still too large for its position and the supporting infrastructure. The problem is, opposing it would mean the developers could fall back on the permission given in 2022, start work, fell the tree and build an even larger development. That is how the planning system works.