As the weather warms, beautiful areas such as ours attract many visitors. Most treat the area with respect and are hugely beneficial to our local economy. That said, the beautiful landscape and winding roads of the South Downs National Park do attract people who think they’re at Silverstone. All of us from the area know how loud and dangerous drivers can be on our rural roads, rapidly and recklessly accelerating, overtaking, and speeding around corners – especially motorbikes.
For several years I’ve been working closely with communities, councillors, and Sussex Police to reduce the impact noisy vehicles have across the Downs. I have put in an application for an acoustic camera along the A272, as part of a trial being held by the Department for Transport. It’s not guaranteed, but I am optimistic as it has the support of the Country Council, and Sussex Police. If granted this acoustic camera could be a useful enforcement tool to combat noise pollution in the countryside, so I am extremely grateful to everyone supporting my application.
The recent warmer weather also brought traveller communities back into the area, with a group temporarily occupying over 30 spaces in Northgate car park. This was obviously hugely inconvenient to locals, impacting the high street, Chichester Festival Theatre and the vaccination centre. I am hugely grateful to our District Commander Nick Bowman who took swift action, authorising police powers to ensure their swift departure.
Over recent years our area has been victim to far worse with illegal traveller sites, causing massive community distress due to anti-social behaviour, property damage, and large amounts of waste being left behind. To combat this we’ve now passed the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which increases police powers, making a new criminal offence where a person resides or intends to reside on any public or private land without permission and has caused, or is likely to cause, significant harm, obstruction, or harassment or distress.
The vast majority of the travelling community are law-abiding people, and we are developing more transit and permanent sites through our £10m Traveller Site Fund – but these new laws will help communities like ours combat illegal behaviour.
