Village green campaigners urge more to sign petition

CAMPAIGNERS fighting to save a much-loved open space in Littlehampton are readying themselves for one final push.

Members of the Toddington, Littlehampton and Wick Village Green Association – whose supporters include Bognor Regis and Littlehampton MP, Nick Gibb – have drawn up a petition in a last-ditch effort to save the Old School Field site, between the A259 and The Littlehampton Academy.

The battle comes more than a month on from an unpopular decision by West Sussex County Council’s rights of way committee to refuse full village green status to the 15-acre field.

Campaign leader, Nick Sutton, of Toddington Park, said: “Last month’s decision was a bitter blow.

“This petition is a battle against the increasing rise of new houses being built in our area. This is the last green space left for the community.

“We feel that if we don’t draw a line in the sand now we will have no green space at all.”

At last month’s rights of way committee meeting, held at County Hall, Chichester, the campaigners unsuccessfully applied for the field to be granted village green status. Committee members felt that the legal criteria of the field being continuously used by the public for 20 years had not been meet.