With its latest planning application, Rocklands Caravan Park is seeking to go round (or supersede) the Planning Inspector’s decision regarding the notorious ‘Bunker’ beside Hastings Country Park. Will Hastings Borough Council (HBC) require remeasurement of the misshapen building before deciding on the application, to know what it’s dealing with? What about the other works on site? Bernard McGinley tries to find out, again.
Rocklands Caravan Park and controversy seem to be inseparable bedfellows. Can Rocklands ever be a good neighbour to Hastings Country Park? It’s not impossible. But there’s no sign of it yet, as Bernard McGinley (a Friend of the Country Park) finds as he looks into the latest breaches of planning permission, and calls for firm action by the council.
Following their successful Bunker appeal, Rocklands have now submitted a planting scheme to screen the building from public view, a condition imposed by the planning inspector who heard the appeal. Approval or rejection of the proposed scheme will be decided by HBC planning officers who however have declined to take any comments from the public. Chris Hurrell of Save Ecclesbourne Glen (SEG) assesses the scheme.
Many questions remain as to how the notorious ‘Bunker’ in Rocklands caravan park was fast-tracked from refusal to planning consent. Digging in the files, St Leonards exile, Richard Heritage, uncovers a revealing memo of a meeting between Hastings Borough Council’s then development manager and the owners of the caravan park – and finds that the two applications for the same proposal were assessed completely differently.
The widely disliked Bunker in Hastings Country Park remains with us following a successful appeal by the owner. The decision is a bitter blow for those who have campaigned for its removal, in whose eyes the council has signally failed to protect one of the town’s loveliest assets. Nick Terdre reports.
The so-called Bunker dominating the Country Park at Rocklands, is still standing. Will it survive or will it have to be demolished? Last March, Hastings Borough Council rejected retrospective planning application HS/FA/14/01036. Now the matter is going to appeal, to be heard by a planning inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Bernard McGinley reports.
The Save Ecclesbourne Glen group, which has led public opposition to the unauthorised Bunker built at Rocklands Caravan Park, has registered to make a submission to the hearing of the appeal by the Rocklands owner against the council’s enforcement order to have the building demolished. The latest display of public anger against the Bunker, and the council’s handling of the matter, came at the protest picnic held in Hastings Country Park, which was attended by roving reporter Richard Price.
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Fewer trees, more visible ‘Bunker’
The Hastings Country Park controversies rumble loudly on. Some things don’t change (such as the ‘Bunker’ being impermissibly still there after all these years). Others do, including the range of grievances and the threatened increasing visibility of the ‘Bunker’. Bernard McGinley reports.