Titnore Woods — amazing victory! But…

IN A TOTALLY unex­pect­ed move, Wor­thing bor­ough coun­cil­lors have thrown out the 875-home hous­ing scheme threat­en­ing Tit­nore Woods.

They had been rec­om­mend­ed to approve the plans and there was lit­tle sug­ges­tion that the Tory-run author­i­ty had any thought of say­ing no to the prop­er­ty devel­op­ers.
Maybe it was the vast wave of oppo­si­tion in the town that swayed them, maybe the ongo­ing pres­ence of the protest camp after near­ly four years, maybe the artic­u­late and knowl­edge­able speech­es against the devel­op­ment, maybe the tan­gi­ble seething anger in the hall from a wide spec­trum of the town’s pop­u­la­tion, maybe it was some­thing to do with the forth­com­ing elec­tions…
It is also very like­ly that the devel­op­ers’ con­sor­tium will appeal, of course. But that’s a fight for anoth­er day.
This is the moment to cel­e­brate the win­ning of a mas­sive local vic­to­ry — and the reprieve, for the time being at least, of the woods and fields of West Dur­ring­ton from the pow­ers of greed and destruc­tion.

Here’s what the local paper put up on its web­site:

Ela­tion as coun­cil­lors reject West Dur­ring­ton devel­op­ment

WORTHING Coun­cil’s plan­ning com­mit­tee has reject­ed the con­tro­ver­sial West Dur­ring­ton devel­op­ment, which would have even­tu­al­ly fea­tured around 1,200 homes and a school and led to the destruc­tion of ancient wood­land.

The coun­cil’s devel­op­ment and con­trol com­mit­tee unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed against offi­cers’ rec­om­men­da­tions that the deci­sion be referred, with their back­ing, to the Sec­re­tary of State, and instead reject­ed the plans out­right.

Around 180 peo­ple attend­ed the meet­ing, which was held at the Assem­bly Hall to accom­mo­date the intense pub­lic inter­est in the scheme.
Many cheered and hugged in the aisle when com­mit­tee mem­bers vot­ed against the scheme.

Oth­ers shout­ed “thank you” and gave the com­mit­tee a stand­ing ova­tion.

Vio­lent scenes at pre­vi­ous meet­ings meant numer­ous secu­ri­ty offi­cers mon­i­tored pub­lic access and patrolled inside the hall and a heavy police pres­ence kept order out­side.

But dis­tur­bances inside the hall were lim­it­ed to a few vocal inter­rup­tions and any threat of dis­or­der evap­o­rat­ed once coun­cil­lors’ oppo­si­tion to the plans became appar­ent.

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Tit­nore Pro­test­er begins hunger strike in response to wrong­ful arrest

On the morn­ing of the 5th March ten police offi­cers entered Tit­nore woods protest site in west Dur­ring­ton bran­dish­ing cam­eras and gath­er­ing footage of the site. One man, Jack Rum­bold was arrest­ed and charged with “obstruct­ing a police offi­cer.” Mr Rumbold’s strin­gent bail con­di­tions for­bid him from enter­ing the Tit­nore woods site where he had been liv­ing peace­ful­ly for some time, effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing him home­less and unable to con­tact the oth­er pro­test­ers he required to give evi­dence about the arrest. On the 17th March Mr. Rum­bold walked into Cen­te­nary house, Durrington’s local police sta­tion demand­ing that he be re arrest­ed and held on remand. Mr Rumbold’s actions were made in an attempt to force the author­i­ties to reassess the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing his dis­pro­por­tion­ate pun­ish­ment. Jack main­tains there is “no case to answer” regard­ing the inci­dent. This comes at a time when camp Tit­nore should be cel­e­brat­ing it’s recent vic­to­ry in Wor­thing town hall as the local plan­ning com­mit­tee rejects plans to dev­as­tate over a hun­dred acres of Goring’s ancient wood­land. How­ev­er, for the camp the relief is all too fleet­ing, with prepa­ra­tions already being made for the upcom­ing appeal against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly made deci­sion. As the real­i­ty of the bat­tle ahead sinks in the camp’s thoughts are with Jack, who will be on hunger strike in a prison cell in Lewes.
For more infor­ma­tion con­tact Tit­nore Wood’s protest site at 0791353408