Southwick flats plan rejected

Adur District Council planning committee members were also worried about the high volume of traffic the site would generate. The scheme to put up the two-storey building of 12 flats in leafy Southdown Road had already angered members of a gentlemen's club opposite and other neighbours.

For more than 85 years, Champion House Club has offered its members, gentlemen of a mature age, a chance to play snooker, chess and cribbage, and to drink in the bar, but it feared the flats would cause disruption and a loss of privacy.

The application, recommended for approval by planning officers, would have involved demolishing two houses to make way for the flats. Residents whose detached homes make up the rest of Southdown Road also objected on the grounds it was an overdevelopment, with a cramped layout and of a higher density than The Croft, a block of flats further along the road.