Comment: Happy New Year

By Jess Brown-Fuller MP

Happy New Year to all Chichester constituents and readers of my weekly column. I hope you’ve all managed to have a break over this festive period. I’ve over-indulged, over-slept and relished every moment I’ve managed to spend with my family before we return to our now-familiar pattern, where I spend the first half of the week representing constituents in Parliament, returning home at the end of the week for visits, meetings and my regular advice surgeries.  

Jess meeting a resident in Chichester

For a bit of light-reading, I tackled the 250-page consultation document on the proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, which will no doubt severely impact development in our area, especially in the Harbour villages with train stations, like Southbourne, Bosham, Fishbourne and Nutbourne, where the government propose introducing ‘default yes’ on all development, even on greenfield sites.  

In 2026, I’ll continue to press the Government to deliver a planning system that delivers the sorts of homes we need in our area, like social, affordable and starter homes. The 1.4 million unbuilt homes with planning permission would suggest the planning system has a building crisis, not a housing crisis, but the government seem intent on driving forward with higher mandated housing targets without addressing the problems in the system.  

I will also continue my campaign to have Chichester Crown Court reinstated as a fully functioning Crown Court, rather than serving as a Nightingale Court. Local residents deserve access to justice and Chichester Crown Court was the only functioning Crown Court in West Sussex before the Conservatives closed it in 2018. I will also continue to push for solutions to address the court backlogs, without eroding our judicial system by removing jury trials. 

I will work to achieve cleaner rivers, harbours and seas across the Chichester constituency. That means working with Southern Water to encourage investment in water infrastructure locally, as well as strengthening legislation based on the extensive Cunliffe Review published earlier in 2025, to properly hold water companies to account for their failures, via a single regulatory body with real teeth.  

I look forward to meeting many more of you in 2026, either by knocking on your door or by running regular advice surgeries and drop-ins across the Constituency, from Bersted to Southbourne, Goodwood to the Witterings, and everything in-between. If you’d like to meet with me to discuss an issue, please email my office jess.brownfuller.mp@parliament.uk and we will add you to our mailing list so you can be informed of surgery dates in advance.