Temporary Worthing bus depot for Compass Travel at Northbrook College's car park

A temporary bus depot for Compass Travel (Sussex) Ltd in the college car park was approved for 18 months by Worthing Borough Council’s planning committee on Wednesday 26 July – having been deferred in April this year after public outcry and a lengthy report from the council’s Environmental Health officers.

The 18 months will be used by the council to assess the merits of the depot, and will ask residents to keep an eye on Compass for them to help with that assessment.

Within that time, three months will be spent building office, cleaning and maintenance buildings for the depot, with additional entrances for a less polluting and noisy bus layout to be added as well as some landscaping.

Residents of the area felt Compass had been not adequately taken into consideration the people living around the college, that there was a lack of public input on the depot, operating hours were unreasonable, and noise and air pollution was unacceptable.

Barry Burks, a leader of the residents’ campaign, said he was not happy with the decision, having campaigned for the deferral in April, calling the council’s decision ‘out of order’ and giving responsibility of monitoring to residents instead of council officers ‘nonsense’.

He said: “It’s a bit cheap getting residents to do it on [the council’s] behalf, but then who am I? I’m just a local resident – I think it’s totally out of order.”

Seb Daniels, who lives next to the temporary depot, said to the committee: “How can you possibly approve this application temporarily or not?

“The things we’ve asked for haven’t changed – it feels like we’re swimming against the tide and not having much effect.

“You’re telling me that there’s no other site in Sussex or West Sussex north of here that can run a bus depot? That can’t be true.”

He said revised plans after deferral had ‘improved things’ but that noise pollution was still not below ‘acceptable levels’ as council officers had reported them to be after observations and testing.

Compass set up the bus depot last year in an agreement with the school, after their lease from 2003 in Faraday Close, Durrington, expired in 2021, and their temporary depot from 2021-22 on the old HMRC site in Durrington was lost to the new care home approved on the site.

Christopher Chatfield, managing director of Compass Sussex, said: “Our main operation is Worthing, most of our vehicles are based in Worthing, it’s questionable whether the company could survive without the main centre.

“Even if the other depots could carry on it would mean all the bus routes in West Sussex would go – there’s about 20 bus routes in West Sussex in total, as a company we carry two million passengers a year, we employ 150 drivers, 180 staff in total.

“At the end of the day, there is no immediate alternatives so if [the application] is refused it would mean the end of the operation.

“We will continue to look for alternative sites but we have been looking for the last 20 years and there is nothing else available.”

To view details of the plans visit https://planning.adur-worthing.gov.uk/online-applications/ with the reference code AWDM/0855/23.