Mowbray Employment Park: County Flood Team Objects to Plan

West Sussex County Council’s flood team has objected to the plans for Mowbray Employment Park in north Horsham. It says the drainage design is based on an out-of-date strategy from the original 2016 application.

The objection is one of 23 consultation documents now on the file for application DC/26/1240 (council document search). Most of them raise no objection. But three of Horsham District Council’s own specialist officers want changes, and its business team has asked for a plot to be set aside for a start-up centre.

The application is Legal & General’s outline plan for offices, warehouses, a health centre with a pharmacy and a commercial leisure building on 17.21 hectares beside the A264. We set out the three options and the 977-job forecast when it went on the register in August (our earlier report).

Why the flood authority objects

The county council is the lead local flood authority. Its response, dated 16 September, says the drainage scheme was based on the outline strategy approved for the wider Mowbray scheme under DC/16/1677. It says that ignores the National Standards for sustainable drainage, introduced since.

The plan relies on “a significant amount of underground storage”, the flood team said. It wants surface features such as ponds and swales considered now, not left to detailed design. “There are various other employment parks elsewhere which utilise SuDS,” it added.

Its conclusion is blunt: “We therefore object to this application and require further information. The application is not in accordance with the NPPF.”

Gatwick Airport has a related concern. Open water attracts birds, so on 12 September it said it would object unless any permission carries conditions. These would give the council control over the design of drainage ponds, water features and any solar panels, to manage the risk of bird strike, glint and glare.

Hedgerows, woodland and wildlife

Three council officers have asked for changes on the landscape and nature side.

• Landscape (30 September): modification. The officer says the scheme “substantially weakens the green infrastructure network” compared with the 2016 permission. They want wider buffers to protect hedgerows and woodland that appear on maps from the 1830s to the 1880s. They also say the applicant’s assessment understates the harm, and that no tree protection plan has been supplied.
• Biodiversity net gain (17 September): holding objection. On the applicant’s own calculation, the scheme would lose 61.99% of its habitat value and 100% of its hedgerow value. The officer says those figures are likely to change once a layout is chosen. They advise against putting buildings next to the priority woodland on the north-east edge.
• Trees (24 September): advice. The amount of hedgerow to be removed “has not been quantified”, and there is not enough information to judge the effect of roads and drainage on retained trees.

Other wildlife advice is less critical. The county’s ecology advisers raise no objection subject to conditions; their surveys found one pair of skylarks breeding in the southern field. NatureSpace, consulted on great crested newts, recommends a licence. It counts 10 ponds within 500 metres and recent newt records within 250 metres.

Who raised no objection

The highways authority says the traffic would be no worse than the business park already approved in 2016. It wants a travel plan for every unit, secured by a legal agreement with a monitoring fee of £5,865. It also notes that several junction mouths already approved for the access road may serve no building at all, leaving “accesses to nowhere”.

North Horsham Parish Council did not object to the employment park itself. Its planning committee recorded concern about “potential further development of housing on the station site and the inclusion of housing area on the south east side of the railway line”.

The archaeology adviser says 248 trial trenches dug on the site found no significant remains.

The council’s environmental health team has no objection in principle but says it cannot give a formal view until it has more information. It points to homes on the Horsham side of the A264 and wants noise from plant and activities held 5 decibels below background levels.

A bid for a start-up centre

The warmest response came from the council’s own business team, Enterprising Horsham, on 15 September. It “strongly supports” the principle of the scheme.

It wants a plot set aside for a Horsham Enterprise Centre, which the council has already studied. Its feasibility work describes:

• about 3,075 square metres of floorspace, 2,192 of it lettable
• about 80 small units: offices, studios and workshops
• room for around 240 workers
• a site of about 1.3 acres

The team says that finding a site is the “number-one critical success factor” for the centre. It wants early talks with the developer, so the plot is not left to whatever space is available later.

What it means for you

The application has not been decided. The council’s target date is 15 December 2026. The flood objection and the officers’ requests mean the applicant is likely to submit revised drainage and landscape information before then, and the council may consult again when it does.

All the responses and the applicant’s documents can be read on the council’s document search for DC/26/1240. The formal comment period ended on 15 September, so a late comment is taken into account at the council’s discretion. Comments go through the council’s view and comment on planning applications page.

We follow other big local schemes on our Horsham planning applications page.