Your letters - December 5

We welcome your letters - email them to [email protected] include your name and address if your letter is for publication.

Post Office and shop open for business

IT HAS recently come to our attention that many of our customers think that our Post Office and shop are shut due to the current roadworks being carried out on Gunters Lane.

Unfortunately, these roadworks have been scheduled to last nine weeks and fall over what is usually our busiest trading period - a period that we depend on to see us through the rest of the year.

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We would like to inform all of our valued customers that we ARE open for business as usual, and while we sympathise with them and agree that the roadworks are a bit of an inconvenience, we would ask that they overlook these and continue to support us.

It would be such a shame if after all of the efforts to keep our Post Office open during the recent programme of closures, that we were now forced to shut up shop due to the dramatic fall in business caused by something as trivial as a few cones, a set of traffic lights and a small diversion.

Jonathan and Sarah Armstrong

Windmill Drive Post Office

Time for review

I READ with considerable interest your article on Mr Jack Seabrook's action in respect of the Colonnade being Listed and I fully support his action.

It seems that we also have the same views on the Next Wave proposals for a 'honey pot' (the council's words) on the Colonnade.

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The execution of the council's very expensive schemes, as per the planning consent they obtained in undue haste, must, as I see it, result in an embarrassing financial disaster at the ratepayer's expense.

Surely it is about time that before money is wasted, the council review their proposals in the light of public opinion and give all councillors a free vote.

Can we please keep party politics out of this extremely important issue as it affects everyone who lives in and loves Bexhill.

John L Wilson

FRICS

Retired Chartered Surveyor

Elsted Road

'Seabrook manouevre'

EVERYONE in Bexhill should be profoundly grateful to Mr Jack Seabrook for throwing such a large spanner as Listing into Rother District Council's proposed works concerning the Colonnade.

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And whatever shade of response council supremo Derek Stevens might be forced to emit for publication now (no doubt through grindingly gritted teeth), there is no doubt that the 'Seabrook Manoeuvre' is a major blow to Rother's ill-conceived and ruinous proposals.

One has only to study the reasons for Listing to realise how difficult it would be for the council to proceed with its scheme without significantly compromising those grounds.

On a different score, I would also like to know whether the council intends to proceed without benefit of a cogent commercial feasibility and valuation report from a suitably qualified person.

I suspect that, if it does, the councillors in question will in due course face a really interesting interview with the district auditor, as advised by the District Valuer.

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Isn't it interesting, too, that it takes a former bureaucratic animal like Mr Seabrook to devise such a subtle plan against our own bureaucratic Baldricks.

If we lived in more spiritual times I would have suggested Mr Seabrook as a candidate for early canonisation. In these godless days, though, I would like to nominate Mr Seabrook as Bexhill Man Of The Year.

Henry Gilbard

Collington Lane West

Debating dates

IF YOU are one of the many Bexhill residents interested in, or concerned about, the proposals for redeveloping our much-loved seafront, you may be interested to know you will have two opportunities next week to listen to our councillors debating the subject.

The Seafront Strategy Working Group of Rother District Council met earlier this week. I understand that the councillors of this committee discussed the conditions attaching to the 1m grant and the result of the public consultation of the Next Wave proposals which many attended at the De La Warr Pavilion in October.

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Although this meeting was not open to the public, you will be able to listen to the debates on the recommendations of this group at the following meetings to be held at the Town Hall next week:

Monday, December 8, 5.30pm. Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Thursday, December 11, 2pm. Cabinet Meeting.

Both of these could prove interesting listening.

Jean Bishop

Chairman, Save Our Seafront (SOS)

Serious issues

I WAS pleased to read Dr Echlin's letter where he feels, quite rightly, that Megan Traice deserves a more respectful hearing.

Many serious issues were raised in her letter and it does the authorities no good at all to casually dismiss them.

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I noted that Peter Fairhurst made no mention of the fact that the cost of the musem extension had risen from 1m to 2m and being a Rother councillor at the time he presumably was well aware and voted for it.

He also does not tell us if the extension has doubled in size nor if the design is so advanced that it warrants the extra cost.

I am sure I am not alone in seeking value for money and the council as a whole and Peter in particular should not be shy in telling us all where has all the extra money gone.

That would be far more constuctive than personal attacks on Megan Traice, a long-serving and great friend of the museum.

David Foster

Henley Down

Catsfield

New nightmare?

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ROTHER'S Consultation on Strategy Directions is not exactly a riveting read, but readers should not doubt its importance.

It's the most crucial stage of the Local Development Framework that will replace the Local Plan and shape the future of Bexhill and Rother until 2026.

An example of its importance is the plan, after completing the Link Road and the massive North East Bexhill business and housing development, to move on to another major similar development in North and North West Bexhill.

This scheme was included in Policy BX 3 of the Local Plan but little has been heard since.

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The policy proposes 'development North of Sidley including Oak Tree Farm and Preston Hall Farm' for major commercial and industrial development along a 'wide country avenue', spurring off the Link Road around Glovers Farm, crossing Buckholt Lane, then going above Levetts Wood to a new housing estate above Watermill Lane.

The new document, describing the land as 'rolling farmland divided by ancient woodland' makes it clear that not only will the scheme be passed forward to the Local Development Framework, but that they wish to take it further. Para 6.33 makes it clear that this so-called 'country avenue' will extend right up to the A269 and 'could absorb the Thorne and Lunsford Cross in the built-up area'.

Then, amazingly, it turns in Para 6.34 to plan (unspecified and hitherto unmentioned) 'development west of the A269/Ninfield Road'!

This is already development and environmental destruction gone mad, but would you believe it goes even further? The crunch, again in 6.34, is that the new road will 'provide the transport infrastructure regarded as essential to the planned landfill use of the Ibstock site'.

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So there we have it in two small paragraphs - their dream, our new nightmare: after the Link Road, another major new road lined with industries, going around almost the entire North of Bexhill, ravaging what's left of our green fringes, to end up in a landfill on Turkey Road.

With large waste trucks shuttling back and forth all day, this will be some country avenue!

It is hard, after reading this, to take seriously Rother's long pretensions elsewhere in the document to 'sustainability', 'landscape stewardship' and concern for the environment.

It is also incorrect of them to refer to the proposed Ibstock landfill as 'planned' as the county Waste Local Plan which includes it is shortly to be replaced by a 'Waste Development Framework', to which this document must defer, and which has not yet selected any disposal sites.

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Now is the time to make your views vigorously known so that this road too far, this development too far and the dire prospect of another landfill in Bexhill, just up the road from the new High School and adjacent to local residents and the High Woods, is not carried forward to the final Core Strategy.

Tell the Council, as BALI will, that it's a monstrous scheme that should be utterly abandoned and no more spoken of.

Nick Hollington

Chair

Bexhill Against Landfill/Incineration (BALI)

Thanks for gifts

FOLLOWING a recent presentation from the Hastings branch of the Parachute Regiment Association to Murray Ward, I would like, on behalf of the all the staff and patients on the ward, to extend a huge thanks to the Paras for their work in obtaining these items of toiletries for us from Sainsbury's and Lloyd's Pharmacy.

I would also like to mention that we are supported by the Mothers' Union at All Saint's Church in Sidley, who have kindly donated bathroom packs after fundraising.

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All of these gifts to the ward are invaluable when older people are admitted to the ward in an emergency, and often have no toiletries with them, and we do not have the basics such as soap, razors, toothpaste and brushes available. So once again, thank you to everyone concerned for all of your efforts to make the patients' stay in hospital a little more comfortable.

Senior Sister CHRIS COLLINS

Murray Ward, Conquest Hospital, Hastings

Blue badge plea

MY wife was allocated a disabled parking bay outside our house, but we can never get on it because of vehicles parking without the blue badge.

When I telephoned the police, they sent out a warden to investigate. I was expecting the culprit to either be given a ticket or to be towed away.

I could not have been more wrong. I was told that they could not do anything about it.

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After that the police phoned and I told them that I had seen notices in the town saying 'Only disabled badge holders allowed to park here'. I was told that, yes, you could have a notice but it would take two years to install it. Can someone tell me what use is a disabled parking bay if any non-blue badge holder can use it without being penalised?

R G STEVENS

Magdalen Road

Parking appeal

IS BEXHILL considered only to consist of disabled people? Do the able-bodied, most of which have children, buggies, loads of shopping etc., not exist? Whose idea was it to convert one side of the road which used to be no parking to majority disabled bays? Also the other side has had some disabled bays added as well, so we have even less parking! Where are the spaces for people with children?

Mrs Woodley

Bexhill

HEARING that Woolworths is in trouble was such bad news. It is a national institution and has survived for nearly 100 years. But if Woolworths does close it will be particularly bad for Bexhill.

Bexhill town centre has lost so many shops recently that if Woolworths does close the town centre will be dead. It is the only main shop left that sells toys after the closure of Toyland and Gamleys. It is possible some profitable Woolworths stores may be saved so we must support our local store and not allow the big supermarkets to monopolise the marketplace.

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So please everyone try do as much Christmas shopping at Woolworths as possible, as if it closes it will also have a terrible effect on employment in Bexhill. So this is an SOS '“ Save Our Shops. We must use it or lose it.

Jean Dolan

Links Drive

We're still waiting

I FIND Councillor Mayard comment in the recent Christmas collections leaflet rather comical, as we are still waiting for a green paper bin which we have been asking for the last two years. It is about time someone actually got their finger out and actually did something, rather than claiming how good they are!

Giles Newport

Holmesdale Road

Farcical exercise

I WAS delighted to see Fred Holmes is back on the road having had his taxi licence restored (Observer, November 21) after a long and protracted investigation by Rother District Council. I would like to ask, on behalf of local rate payers, how much of 'our' money was wasted by the council on this farcical exercise?

Mick Atkinson

Pages Lane

An apology

I WOULD like to apologise to the lady in Woolworths on Saturday who was buying a newspaper at lunchtime, as I was discourteous to her and wish to say sorry.

P Colegate

Name and address supplied

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