The Local Plan Inspector asked whether Billingshurst needs Adversane's secondary school. The county says spare places fall to its 5% limit in 2035/36 without it.
Would the Billingshurst area run short of secondary school places if the new town at Adversane were never built? The planning Inspector examining Horsham district’s Local Plan has asked exactly that. The answers are now published, and both councils say yes, from the middle of the next decade.
The question matters because the school is one of the main arguments for Adversane. The 3,200-home settlement at Kingswood, south of Billingshurst, was added to the plan this year and comes with a new secondary school. It had its hearing on Tuesday 20 October.
What the Inspector asked
Inspector Jonathan Bore wrote his question on 14 October, the day after the hearings opened (IDJB11, PDF). He said the county’s education paper did not test whether the area would have a surplus or a deficit of places with every other allocation in the plan, but without Adversane.
So he did the sum himself. His “basic calculation” showed the area staying in surplus until 2035/36, by 26 places, then moving into deficit from 2036/37, by 17 places, “with more significant deficits thereafter”. He asked the councils and the site promoters to comment.
What the county and the district said
West Sussex County Council, which plans school places, replied the same day (DFJB05, PDF). It treats a planning area as full when spare places fall to 5 per cent, the National Audit Office’s minimum for parental choice and changes in year groups.
Its table covers The Weald School, the only secondary school in the Billingshurst planning area. It adds pupils from planning applications since April 2025 and from the plan’s other sites in the area: 1,000 homes east of Billingshurst, plus smaller sites at Billingshurst, Pulborough, Rudgwick and Bucks Green, and Barns Green. Spare places then fall like this:
- 2026/27: 258 spare places, 12 per cent
- 2030/31: 214, 10 per cent
- 2035/36: 122, 5 per cent, the county’s limit
- 2039/40: 59, 3 per cent
“The planning area is considered to be full,” the county says, once the buffer is reached.
Horsham District Council’s reply, agreed with the county, goes further (HDCJB33, PDF). Its main points:
- the plan’s housing figure of 20,100 homes or more needs the equivalent of three new secondary schools in the district; West of Ifield and North West of Southwater provide two, and Adversane would be the third
- The Weald has 10 forms of entry, and room to grow beyond that “has not been demonstrated and is at best limited”
- without a new school in the area, the county “could object to future development” around Billingshurst that would otherwise be acceptable
- the county would not support three secondary schools all close to Horsham, for example at both North West of Southwater and Buck Barn, a site not in the plan; that would likely mean bussing Billingshurst-area pupils out of their area
- a school at Adversane could work with Brinsbury College nearby
The district council also lists the distances to the next nearest schools, as the crow flies: about 7 miles to Tanbridge House, 8 to The Forest and Millais, 9 to Steyning Grammar and 12 to Midhurst Rother College.
Two promoters also replied: Thakeham Homes and Our Place Sustainable Development. Their responses are in the examination library, added on 20 October.
Why the figures differ a little
The Inspector’s sum and the county’s table do not say quite the same thing. He found a surplus of 26 places in 2035/36. The county’s table has 122 spare places that year. It counts the area as full anyway, because 122 is only the 5 per cent buffer it wants to keep. The county’s figures rest on a June 2026 forecast by Edge Analytics and on 0.16 pupils per new home for plan sites. Both the Inspector and the councils say this is a rough guide, not a final count.
What happens next
The hearing sessions were timetabled to end this week, with Thursday 22 October set aside for the Inspector’s announcements and Friday for reserve. Nothing from those announcements had been published by Friday morning.
The council expects the plan to be “fully adopted in early 2027”. Our guide to the hearings has the sites and what was discussed at each.
What it means for you
If you live around Billingshurst, Pulborough or Rudgwick, the councils’ case is that secondary places will be tight within about ten years, with or without Adversane. They argue Adversane is the way to add places close to home. If the Inspector removes or shrinks the site, the question of where your children go to secondary school would need a new answer.
If your child is starting secondary school next September, nothing here changes your choices now. Applications for September 2027 places close at 11.59pm on Saturday 31 October, and offers go out on Monday 1 March 2027 (WSCC key dates for secondary school places).
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