A24 Horsham to Capel - West Sussex County Council

2.1 Nigel Peters, policy advisor to the Cabinet Member for Highways and
Transport has been consulted and agrees that the improvement scheme
should be rescinded.
2.2 The local member is unable to comment due to a potential conflict of interest
regarding this scheme.
2.3 Brad Watson, the Chairman of the County Local Committee has been
consulted and responded indicating that approved alignment was unlikely to
be sustainable due to local opposition.
2.4 Horsham District Council have been consulted on the proposal to rescind the
improvement scheme and have indicated that they are broadly supportive of
the proposal.
2.5 Surrey County Council is currently in the process of reviewing all its major
schemes and will need to reflect any decisions made by the County Council
on the A24 Horsham – Capel improvement scheme.
3. Customer Focus Appraisal
3.1 A CFA has been carried out which outlines that whilst support for this scheme
has been demonstrated in the past, this is not sufficient justification to retain
the scheme. This decision does not prejudice an improvement scheme being
delivered in the future if it were needed and sufficient funding could be
identified to deliver the scheme.
4. Resource Implications and Value for Money
4.1 It is important to rescind obsolete schemes as the County Council could incur
substantial claims for blight compensation. This may be an acceptable
burden if a scheme is needed in the near future, but is otherwise a large
unnecessary cost if there is no prospect of the scheme being delivered. To
date, £2.7m has been spent on blight claims over approximately the last 30
years and the receipt from the resale of surplus properties is £2.1m.
4.2 Any land and property that will become surplus as a result of the rescission
will be assessed to see whether it is suitable to be sold on the open market.
The extent to which there might be opportunity to do this, in this case, is yet
to be determined and so no estimate is available of the potential sales
receipts at this time.
5. Risk Management Implications
5.1 Rescinding this scheme will reduce the risk to the County Council from claims
for statutory blight.
5.2 There is a risk that the accident record on the existing route returns to the
level which prompted the original need for the improvement scheme.
Rescinding the scheme will not protect against this risk but will not prejudice
an improvement scheme being delivered in the future, if it were required for
any reason.