Why our supporters object

Eton’s 500 acre-site sits in the tiny hamlet of East Chiltington and borders the South Downs National Park as well as the villages of Plumpton Green and South Chailey – which would both become part of the proposed new town. It currently has a church, a pub, around 180 homes and under 500 residents.

There is very little of anything in East Chiltington apart from green fields, woodland, ancient hedgerows, birdsong and tranquillity. There are no streetlights, no mains sewerage, no mains gas – no pavements even. Around 75% of East Chiltington’s lanes are single track with few passing places. There are no road networks or population centres nearby - the nearest town of Lewes and the closest dual carriageway are 7 to 8 miles distant from the proposed site.

Tarmacking over this rural idyll with no existing infrastructure makes no planning or environmental logic. Eton has tried to build here before in 2016, when Lewes planners turned down the site and recommended zero building growth for East Chiltington. In 2016, they said the site was ‘not suitable, not deliverable or developable.’

At a time when the world is on the edge of self-destruction, why would a scheme which is not needed, be allowed to deal a death blow to the fragile ecology of a special area of Sussex down land - loved and used for leisure by thousands of people and home to many rare and endangered plants and animals?

Imagine the mayhem if the proposed new town were to go ahead. It would take at least three decades to build a new town, with heavy lorry movements and additional cars adding to already overloaded minor road systems through local villages likes Ditchling – already jammed at peak times – and into local towns like Lewes where the ‘prison crossroads’ are notoriously bad, even now. With upwards of 4,000 extra cars once 3,250 houses are completed, they and delivery vehicles servicing the houses will turn local roads into a traffic nightmare, generating over 3.5m extra car journeys a year in the area.

Even planners admit that building on a site such as this goes against all planning logic. Transport planners GTA Civils conducted a study of the proposed development in 2021 and say that it is: ‘…not in line with national, regional and local policy in terms of transport sustainability. There is a fundamental lack of sustainable transport in the area… Safe and suitable access will be difficult to achieve given the small rural roads the development would connect to. The impact to the local highway network would be significant and would require very extensive mitigation (which even then may still not be sufficient)’.

On average a person uses 125-150 litres of water a day. Upwards of 7000 additional people living in Eton’s new town would use around 320 million litres of water a year. Water companies are already taking too much from our underground chalk aquifers and our reservoirs are more often low than full, giving rise to regular hosepipe bans, despite record levels of rain. Where will this additional water come from if we can’t even manage with the current demand?

The Bevern Stream, which runs across the Eton land, regularly floods - blocking the lanes and flowing across nearby fields, which act like blotting paper and soak up the water. If a new town is built, the water would have nowhere to go, as tarmac isn’t porous. This will lead to more flooding. In addition, the stream will become polluted as increased run-off from bigger and more-used roads flows into the Bevern and beyond to the Ouse Valley and Lewes.

Run-off and pollution could have a devastating effect on the rare sea trout population which spawns in the chalk stream. Sam St Pierre, chair of the Ouse & Adur Rivers Trust said: “If the Bevern got further polluted, the trout here could go extinct. And we’re not talking about acute pollution – we’re talking about the kind of general low-grade pollution that you would get as run-off from urban development.” The Bevern is also home other rare fish and substantial mayfly and caddis fly populations which are also very sensitive to pollution.

The Bevern is a tributary of the River Ouse, which caused huge destruction when it flooded in 2000. A low-lying area prone to flooding is not the best place for a new town. “Building 3,250 houses at this location is geologically stupid and irresponsible…” - Professor Julian Murton, University of Sussex.

Back in 2018, the Strategic Housing and Economic Land Availability Assessment for Lewes District concluded for the East Chiltington site that: ‘Significant adverse impact upon the landscape character of this area, much of which forms a setting for the South Downs National Park (SDNP), would be unavoidable’. Nothing has changed. The same is true now.

• Eton’s new town site directly borders the SDNP, which would be blighted by a huge urbanisation right on its doorstep

• 16 million people visit the SDNP each year and enjoy stunning countryside views from the top of the downs. Imagine looking across a huge urban sprawl

• In 2016, the SDNP became the newest of only 16 International Dark Sky Reserves in the world. Light pollution from 3,250 houses and the streets that reach them would threaten that status

• The area is also a UNESCO biosphere, one of only 7 in the UK.

Yes more housing is needed, but in the right place and for an affordable price.

Welbeck Land, Eton’s land promoter and a co-member of the North Barnes Farm Partnership, is responsible for the 1,000-house development at Ridgewood Place, Uckfield. Builder Taylor Wimpey is advertising houses for sale in Phase 2 of the development with a staggering starting price of £371,000 (Aug 2023).

There are alternatives to mass building on green fields:

• There are currently no incentives for developers and builders to look to brown-field sites – incredibly, VAT is charged on converting existing buildings into homes while building over countryside is zero rated. Urban sites should be used first

• There is no time limit imposed on building once planning permission is given - which means wealthy landowners like Eton can simply sit on the land and watch prices rise. As of May 2023, In the Lewes District, sites for 1,872 houses given planning permission in the Lewes District have not been built on. Time limits could be imposed as part of planning permission to ensure these sites are built on first

• Putting restrictions on second home ownership, buy to let, air bnbs, and foreign investment in property could help free up existing housing stock for home

• What happened to ‘levelling up’? Why would builders opt to build in deprived areas where house prices are low, when they can make more money where new houses are at a premium – as in East Sussex. Incentives could be given to build where the need is most

If Eton College - and its two partners in the North Barnes Farm Partnership, the Plunkett Foundation and land promoters Welbeck Land - are allowed to build 3,250 houses here, it will destroy a rare and beautiful area of unspoilt East Sussex countryside and productive farmland forever.

The Eton land contains irreplaceable and protected wildlife habitats including ancient hedgerows, woodlands and veteran oak trees. It provides nature corridors for rare and endangered animals and birds, plus over 530 species of flowering plants, fungi, lichens, liverworts, mosses and ferns.

Official records show 28 species of mammals including 8 species of bats, some of them very rare; 121 bird species including endangered birds like skylarks, nightingales and corncrakes; huge numbers of butterflies, bees and other insects; plus numerous reptiles and amphibians all live on the site of the new town. Many are already classed as endangered species. Where will they go?

All this contributes towards genetic diversity, soil, water and air quality, carbon storage … and brings other benefits to us all. The carbon footprint of a 3,250-house new town in an isolated area, plus all its new infrastructure would be significant.

We believe this is too high a price to pay to help Eton College, a charitable trust, make yet more millions in non-taxable profit. We owe it to the generations that follow to protect our cherished rural areas from irreversible destruction and to play our part in minimising the effects of climate change. At a time of environmental crisis, Eton should be setting an example to its pupils and to our wider generation of young people by doing its bit for the planet - not obliterating nature for profit.

Like many other councils across the country, Lewes District Council has been charged by central government to almost double the annual housebuilding targets it had in its local plan, based on inaccurate and outdated population growth projections produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) back in 2014.

More recent ONS figures in 2018 and 2020 show a significant decline in population growth – so much so, that the original annual housebuilding targets set by the council were just about right all along!

The government is now reviewing its stance on mandatory housing targets for local authorities as part of its ‘Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill’ that's currently working its way through parliament, so a more reasonable and less destructive level of house building on greenfield sites in the area may become possible. We can only hope change comes soon enough to help stop Eton’s plans.