Mid Sussex is an area of quality. Much of the county is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and it is home to attractions such as the Bluebell Railway and Wakehurst Place – ‘Kew in the country'.

The district council, though, recognised in 2004 that its town centres of Burgess Hill, Haywards Heath and East Grinstead, which each have a population of around 30,000 people, needed a great deal of tender loving care.