Mark Dunn

Over the last 10 days I’ve walked right round Westbourne and Woodmancote…Delivering leaflets and having a good look round. I think I’ve been everywhere.

Several good things strike me. First the place really is very neat and tidy. The greening campaign and the upcoming Gardens Open Day are clearly very good local initiatives, and one must be struck by making a comparison between Westbourne and some other coastal villages, which don’t have the same sense of ‘pride of place’.

There are exceptions, of course, and how difficult it must be for really old and infirm people to let their once treasured front gardens slip back into weedy and overgrown areas.

I wonder if we might start a neighbourhood garden-tidying group of volunteers who would just tidy up and keep grass cut and shrubs trimmed for older people…. it would make a big difference.

The National Park is both a threat and a victory. The victory is for conservation and ‘green policies’, which will protect and cherish – even more than before – the wonderful downland of West Sussex.

The threat is just as real, although it is less understood. It results from the relentless Housing Development Pressure on “The Strip”, lying between Emsworth and Chichester, which is neither in the National Park nor in the Chichester Harbour Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but which is home to most of the people who live in the County Council’s Electoral Division of The Bourne.

The communities of Southbourne, parts of Chidham and Westbourne – and their surrounding hamlets – are being targetted by developers. They need a correspondingly louder and more focussed effort to protect them from developers, who have become over-aggressive.

I undertake to speak up in support of local people who feel under threat from over development. I will support the Chichester District Councillors who carry the weighty responsibility for Development Control, and do my best to make local opinion prevail over remote faceless planners.