Your Councils Are Changing- Survey Summary

Your Councils are Changing – Potential Assets for Southwater Parish Council to take over – Survey summary

Southwater Parish Council has run a survey to gather residents’ views on proposed major changes to local government in West Sussex. Central Government is progressing Local Government Reorganisation, which will replace the current county, district, and borough councils’ structure with new unitary authorities. Ahead of this, Southwater Parish Council sought residents’ views on whether it should take on the ownership and management of certain local assets (e.g. play areas, open spaces and woodlands) currently overseen and managed by Horsham District Council.

If taken on, these assets would be managed more locally by Southwater Parish Council, subject to strict legal provisions under Horsham District Council’s Community Asset Transfer Policy to ensure long term stewardship and no change of use.

This may in the future require an increase in the parish precept to cover maintenance and management costs. However, local ownership can also bring benefits, including greater local accountability, improvement or continuity of maintenance standards and decision making focused solely on Southwater.

For more information, please see our FAQs about Local Government Reorganisation and Asset Transfers.

The survey invited responses via a flyer distributed to every household or via an online version by 31 October 2025.

The responses and survey summary are shared in the document accessible here.