NOW that Christmas is officially over and the New Year is well into its stride, it's time to look ahead and wonder what will happen to our lovely county in the next hundred years or even the whole millennium.

The chief problem will be holding back the rising tide of bricks and asphalt as pressure grows inexorably for more homes and roads. With the Downs and coast mainly off limits, it's the Weald that will be buckling under the strain.

So long as successive Government environment secretaries keep increasing the housebuilding limits, there's almost nothing local councillors can do about it, even though it often breaks their hearts to see woods and fields being covered by concrete.

But there is every reason for calling a halt to the building. The population of this country is growing extremely slowly. There are plenty of brownfield sites in our major towns and cities where new homes can be built.

There is no need for many, if any, to be built in Sussex. I'd love to see a moratorium declared now on all new homes, except those providing social housing, in the county. It may be a pious hope now, but it could become reality later this century as people rebel against the growing urbanisation of Sussex.

The Downs, I fancy, will be greatly improved as a national park. They will become increasingly important as a green oasis between the coastal plain, already largely developed, and the growing towns in the Weald. The improved protection and more professional management a national park brings will be evident to all who walk on these hills.

I think in time greater protection will also be needed for other threatened corners of the county, including the Ashdown Forest as pressures for development continue.

There's little doubt over the years that the A27 will become a motorway in all but name as the main east-west road across the country. But I fancy pressure will grow for parts of it to be placed underground, especially north of Worthing where any road through the Downs would cause enormous damage. And its expansion will prevent plans for a second east-west highway somewhere along the line of the existing A272.

The continued growth in rail journeys should also lead to huge improvements in the east and west Coastway lines, providing a real public transport alternative to the roads. I reckon we will also see one or two lines reopening, notably that between Lewes and Uckfield, although house building will make it impossible for others to do so.

I still hope that the West Pier in Brighton will be restored, although the process is taking longer and proving tougher than almost anyone imagined. It is now clear that when the huge National Lottery award was made for the pier it was just the start of the restoration process rather than the end.

Brighton and Hove have probably finished growing. The same can't be said of Eastbourne and Worthing which in the end will start to catch it up in size, if not in style. Crawley is likely to expand even more quickly.

Sadly it's unlikely that anyone who reads this will be around at the dawn of the next century. But it is nice to think of someone clutching this piece as the year 2100 arrives, if only to prove how impossibly wrong I was.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.