Arun Council has written to Housing Minister Caroline Flint, requesting a meeting about the proposed eco-town at Ford, west Sussex, detailing the main issues they wish to discuss.

The Council was informed in a letter from Ms Flint's office last week that Ford had been selected as one of the 15 locations at which an eco-town of 5,000 houses or more could be built.

Chief Executive Ian Sumnall, on behalf of Council Leader Mrs Gillian Brown, has accepted Ms Flint's offer to meet and discuss the proposal as soon as possible, and set out a number of questions to be answered.

These include whether or not the two different submissions for eco-towns at Ford - one from the Ford Vision Group and one from the Ford Enterprise Hub - will be assessed separately, or whether they could be joined together to create a town of around 10,000 houses.

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It also asks whether or not any additional funding and resources will be provided by central Government to help Arun deal with the inevitable strains of such a massive development, should it go ahead.

Chief Executive Ian Sumnall said: "No-one is really sure exactly what an eco-town is or how they will be implemented, as nothing quite like this has ever happened before in the history of planning in this country.

"We therefore need to clarify a number of issues with Ms Flint as we have specified in our letter.

"As the local planning authority, we are used to having responsibility for all developments in our District, but the eco-town decision has been taken out of our hands. We therefore need clear guidance on whether or not we have a say in what would be the biggest single development Arun has ever seen.

"We are particularly concerned at how a site which our planning officers found unsuitable for this kind of development using the government’s own planning policies, has been short-listed by someone outside of the District without local knowledge or any kind of consultation with us."

(CD/JM)