By HILARY GAVIN
Tuesday, May 27th, 2025
IT WAS a squally, blustery English summer’s day this afternoon when I drove past the Green Lane T-Junction bus stop which I consider to be a DEATH-TRAP.
As you can see from the photo I took of the north-bound Stagecoach bus stop on Saturday (May 24th, 2025), the main B2145 Chichester to Selsey road surface there is disintegrating making it lethal for both drivers and motorcyclists.
If you’ve read my blogs, you’ll discover that I was born in the parish of Donnington in the early Sixties, so I know only too well how treacherous the windy, ditch-lined country roads are to the south of the cathedral city of Chichester, West Sussex.
On Saturday, I purposely drove to Green Lane to photograph the Stagecoach bus stop on the B2145 and the, quite frankly, THIRD WORLD road surface beside it to complain to West Sussex County Council (WSCC) Highways.
After taking my photo, and speaking with a local who told me he shares my fears, I wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find an abandoned crashed car on the verge at the other end of Green Lane next to the B2201 road junction to Donnington.
Does someone have to DIE before WSCC and Stagecoach act to make the bus stop on the B2145 safe for families and teenagers using public transport to reach the Paradise “Crazy Golf” and Escape Rooms attractions at Chichester Golf Club?
The local I met on Saturday, who was a stranger to me, agreed that a motorcyclist could easily lose control and fall off his or her bike in wet conditions beside the Stagecoach stop. And heaven forbid if they plough into waiting bus users.
I only had a brief conversation with the local man on Saturday, but I got the impression that WSCC doesn’t cut the hedges beside the fields at the junction. Sometimes, he told me, the overgrown foliage meant drivers turning right onto the B2145 at the Green Lane junction couldn’t see traffic travelling south on the bend before the historic Hunston Mill.
I have to confess that this comment preyed on my mind over the weekend because there is a For Sale sign (see photo below) at Kipson Bank Farm opposite Hunston Mill which says there is planning permission for three architect-designed residential dwellings there.
Once home, I went online to view the relevant planning applications on the Chichester District Council (CDC) website and I was, quite honestly, bemused as I watched the video of councillors discussing plans for converting a grain store at Kipson Bank Farm into two dwellings as part of the development.
You can watch the Zoom video link of CDC planning committee members discussing these plans next to the Grade II Kipson House at their meeting on March 28th, 2024, on the council website.
As you can see, these plans were referred to the committee after consultee Hunston Parish Council objected to them, and the parish clerk, Carol Smith, addressed the committee members raising concerns about the elevation of the development, its urban design in a rural setting and light pollution.
If you read the documents for this conversion, and the separate plans to develop the barn at the Kipson Bank Farm site, you’ll see they include a Streetwise Ltd survey conducted over a week and recording around 14,000 vehicles, cars, vans, lorries and motorcycles using the B2145 daily in mid-August 2022.
In view of this volume of traffic, and the local resident’s apparent worries about the hedges and the bend at Hunston Mill opposite Kipson Bank Farm, I – for one – was surprised by the WSCC report of January 2024 which stated: “The LHA does not consider that this proposal would have an unacceptable impact on highway safety or result in ‘severe’ cumulative impacts on the operation of the highway network…”
If I remember rightly, the plans at Kipson Bank Farm assume each dwelling will have a least two or three cars given their rural setting and lack of public transport – so SIX MORE at least, or possibly NINE.
Forgive me if I missed something, but I don’t recall any of the CDC councillors during the planning committee meeting in March 2024 raising the question of the volume of traffic on the B2145, although I did hear North Mundham and Tangmere ward CDC councillor David Betts surmising about “creeping development”.
And I was, as I said, rather bemused and incredulous when some of the CDC planning committee members requested additional planting around the proposed development at Kipson Bank Farm to retain the beauty of the countryside.
I assume CDC planners must have sent out advisory letters to residents living near Kipson Bank Farm – and I can see the couple living at Kipson House wrote to the council in July 2023 before planning permission was granted in March 2024.
But the local man I spoke to on Saturday seemed surprised that planning permission had be granted at the farmland, which is managed by the Langmead Group Ltd, so I wonder what he’d say about any additional vegetation.
And I also found myself scratching my head wondering why the folk living at Five Oaks on Green Lane only wrote into the CDC Planning Department in August 2024 to ask what was going on after a planning permit had been granted.
Of course, the two planning permits at Kipson Bank Farm came with provisos as the applicants, Bosham-based Landlink Developments 5 Ltd, agreed to make S106 contributions towards A27 junction and/or highways infrastructure improvements and costs to mitigate any harm to Pagham and Chichester Harbour Conservancy.
Naturally, both my local councils have IGNORED my worries about the Green Lane T-junction – but I’d like to think that any future residents living at Kipson Bank Farm might consider ditching their cars in favour of eco-friendly public transport seeing as they’ll have a bus stop on their doorstep.
Go green, I say.
UPDATE: (8am Monday, June 2nd, 2025) I have been told on The Selsey Grapevine on social media that the car I photographed for this blog post had been damaged by a hit and run driver. Of course, it had police tape on it so Chichester Police should have a record of what happened.
UPDATE TWO: (8.09am, June 2nd, 2025) I have gleaned from The Selsey Grapevine social media site that WSCC will be working on the stretch of road by the Stagecoach bus stop on the B2145 late this month. As you know, I find it nigh-on impossible communicating with my county council but my WSCC Green Party councillor Sarah Sharp should be able to tell me what is happening.
See Chichester District Council planning references:
https://www.chichester.gov.uk/view-planning-applications
23/01377/FUL
22/03211/FUL
22/02770/FUL
22/02771/LBC
22/02350/PA3Q
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T/A Business ‘n’ Commas, Hunston, Chichester, PO20 1NY
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