A brighter future for West St Leonards
The next leap forward in creating a Neighbourhood Plan for West St Leonards
Over the winter, huge steps have taken place in planning the future of West St Leonards. Patricia Walton from the West St Leonards Neighbourhood Forum shares the latest news – and a date to add to your diaries.
Two projects involving West St Leonards Neighbourhood Forum have reached a critical point. Saturday 25 January saw the well-attended exhibition and community consultation on the development of the Old Bathing Pool site, with impressive projections from Hastings Urban Design Group. This also marked the relaunch of the SOBS (Save Our Bathing Site) campaign group, which will take that project forward.
Visioning event
Next, we are holding a ‘visioning’ event on Saturday 22 February, to help develop our official Neighbourhood Plan for the wider West St Leonards area.
There will be a drop-in introductory exhibition, including refreshments, from 11am–2pm. For anyone able to stay for the afternoon, a sit-down ‘ideas’ workshop from 2–4.30pm will be led by our independent neighbourhood planning consultant, Jim Boot.
West St Leonards needs YOU!
We would like to know that enough people are committed to coming along and participating in the 2–4.30pm ‘working’ section, so please e-mail williamackroyd@weststleonards.org.uk if you know you are able to attend the afternoon session.
This day is particularly for residents and businesses in the West St Leonards Neighbourhood Forum area, but anyone who is interested in contributing to the the future of the area is very welcome.
The event will be held at West St Leonards Community Centre, Bexhill Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, TN38 8BL (next to the Medical Centre on the corner of Filsham Road). Parking is available.
The West St Leonards Neighbourhood Plan Area area is (roughly) a triangle, stretching from Combe Valley Country Park and the Bulverhithe ‘Amsterdam’ beach in the west, across the seafront to the Old Bathing Pool site and West Marina Gardens, then upwards through multiple residential areas to the Porters Grove development (just below Crowhurst Road). With several lovely, well-used, and scientifically significant green and seaside spaces, it also includes a long stretch of the heavily trafficked A259 and the increasingly busy Filsham and Harley Shute Roads.
West St Leonards Neighbourhood Forum was finally designated as a Hastings Neighbourhood Forum Area in February 2024 – the first in Hastings. This means we can create an official Neighbourhood Plan, to influence future development across the area in decades to come. Progress on the project stalled as we waited for government support packages to help with this technically challenging task. In November 2024, the funding and expert help finally arrived!
Planning is now underway at a rapid pace. Although ‘technical’, the heart of the project is about what people in the area see as the best development aims for West St Leonards, drawing on local knowledge and ideas about needs and desires, in more detail than the overarching HBC Local Plan for the whole Borough could ever achieve.
We have collected local views over many years, which has given us a clear and inspiring overview of local priorities (see diagram). We now need to bring this up to date and gather more specific local experiences and opinions to finalise the formal Neighbourhood Plan over coming months.
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