Stakeholder Statements
The South Down Project could dramatically benefit both the Cement Works site and the South Coast region, so a lot of people have opinions about it
One of the things that we’re doing in our plans to develop the Shoreham Cement Works site is that we’re doing everything the “wrong” way round.
What does that mean? Well, the fact is that many developments in the UK are done either by engaging with the local communities that will be affected by that development, either under obligation, or by not engaging with them at all until everything’s been decided.
Now that seems a bit round the wrong way round to us.
So who deserves to have a say?
As locals ourselves, we think that all the other locals, for example like those from Upper Beeding to Shoreham, or from Steyning to Bramber, or from Worthing to Brighton, should be able to have their say about what happens to the Cement Works site BEFORE the developer makes up their mind.
And there are other key local stakeholders, like the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and the local Parish Councils, local Societies, and the local Authorities.
And that’s before you get to our local MPs, and then organisations like Coast to Capital (our Local Enterprise Partnership), and then to Government Ministerial level.
Perhaps most importantly of all, the people who will most affect what happens to the Cement Works site, so deserve listening to, will be the company who ends up owning the land, and the Executives of the South Down National Park.
All deserve their say, and we’re trying to engage with all of them (and more), BEFORE decisions are finally made about what should be done with the site.
Here’s what some people have already said
We’ve been involved in stakeholder engagement since mid 2014. Every person who has written us a Statement has been promised that we’ll print it without changing it at all. So whatever they’ve written, it’s here, in its entirety.
Some of it in praise of our scheme, some of it not so, and some of it a bit ambivalent.
NOTE: if a Statement has been taken from the internet, or isn’t personal to the project, we say so. But where that’s not said, the Statement has been personally written by that stakeholder.
Sir Andrew Motion, President, Campaign to Protect Rural England
