South Downs National Park

Chris has spent more than 30 years working around transport planning, environmental campaigning and community action.

He first became involved through Friends of the Earth in the early 90s, going on to help coordinate the South Coast Against Road Building campaign, and later became a central figure in the campaign to create the South Downs National Park, something that involved more than 160 organisations coming together, and eventually was successful in 2010.

Chris also chaired the partnership, which successfully secured UNESCO Biosphere status for the Brighton and Lewes Downs in 2014, spent five years with the Campaign for Better Transport, supporting communities around the country, and in 2019 he founded the Transport Action Network to campaign for more sustainable transport and to support local groups challenging damaging road schemes.

So I think it's fair to say we know where he stands on more motorways or dual carriageways in Sussex.

So Chris is fairly critical of what's happening, as you'd expect.

But his career is also a reminder that systems are not fixed.

Things like the South Downs National Park exist because people spent years arguing that something different was possible.

And Chris talks in the interview about that journey from campaigning to something being established.

I went to go and visit him at his house.

And he lives by a chalk stream in the South Downs National Park here in the UK.

And he said something really interesting.

He said he felt like he needs to live on chalk because that kind of terrain... somehow suits him whereas when he goes to a different area of the uk which is not far away called the new forest he finds that the soil is quite acidic and he doesn't feel so comfortable there which i was so interested by and i wondered if you'd come across that kind of thing

And there's some even more weirdly interesting statistics beneath that.

South Downs National Park has about 18 certified B Corps within it, which is the highest number of any UK national park by a mile.

And Brighton & Hove itself is about the third largest concentration of B Corps in the UK, outside of London.

So only surpassed, I think, by Bristol and Oxford.

That's our kind of big shopping hub, like within the city.

And so for me, it makes so much sense that sustainable business and like different ways of doing business and being very conscious of being between the sea and the South Downs kind of does end up seeping into businesses DNA.

So I also only heard a few months ago about having 18 businesses in the South Downs National Park.

My understanding is that that's the largest concentration of bee corps in any national park in the UK, which is very exciting.

There's a, a little access way in, and it's on the green fields, uh, the farmer's fields at the bottom there.

So it's actually part of the South Downs National Park.

[machine banging] That'll be 54 homes.

Uh, it's predominantly houses.

Um, and it relates to an appeal for non-determination for up to a hundred and fifty dwellings on a site, uh, in Wivelsfield off Green Road, uh, in Lewes District.

And many of you will know Lewes District is the home to the South Downs National Park, and being caught between the National Park and the channel struggles to meet its housing needs.

[clears throat] And I wonder whether we could just pull up the parameter plan for the proposed development, just to give you some idea, um, [clears throat] of what, uh, the discussion was about.

Um, so Lewes Council originally had three main reasons for opposing the appeal.

So how could the UK encourage them to venture beyond Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London? Alex Polizzi thought it was all about celebrating our natural landscape.

I'm slightly spoiled because I sit in the South Downs National Park, um, which is completely wonderful.

Um, ends by Dartmoor, which is all completely wonderful.

I've got the Cornish coastline, which is absolutely wonderful.

Yet for many people, trying to move something large across the county, whether it's by rail or road or other, will know that transport infrastructure can be challenging, to put it politely.

And that's particularly stark around Petworth, where Ian is building his new enterprise, where Ian's business supports large agriculture and commercial vehicles right in the middle of the South Downs National Park.

So we talk about what a smarter infrastructure might look like if simply carving new motorways through the countryside is off the table.

What about other better arterial routes, strategic distribution hubs, facilities that allow rural businesses to grow without destroying the places that make Sussex attractive in the first place? So there is the experience of somebody actually arriving here as an investor with big plans.

There is no motorway running from east to west.

And even the dual carriageway, the A27, becomes a very narrow single track road and is a huge political hot potato.

And we have the South Downs National Park, which restricts a lot of that road expansion.

And we have an awkward topography that sort of goes through all sorts of different landscapes and stuff.