Email Defra about the Country Park bylaws — or risk losing access to the coastal margin

The proposed new bylaws for Hastings Country Park are still causing concern, ‘Restriction of Access’ and all. Asked to pause their approval of these new bylaws at Full Council recently, for clarification of the issues, Hastings Borough Council (HBC) went full steam ahead. Now it is up to central Government to approve them, or not. Are these bylaws to be made official before the coastal path (and its margin) is made official? It matters, says Bernard McGinley, who explains that you can still object until 13 March.

Hastings Borough Council proposes to make new bylaws for Hastings Country Park to replace the 1974 ones. ‘Restriction of Access’ is a feature of the new proposed bylaws. Leisure use of the north-central Country Park is threatened.

The Council say there was ‘full public consultation’ on this in 2014, but details are scant. Defra (the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) and Natural England were written to as ‘consultation’. No-one else was, and that is ‘full public consultation’. 

Though that consultation was in 2014-15, it is somehow now a matter of great urgency to get the new bylaws finished. This unnecessary Country Park controversy was reported recently in HOT.

Cllr Andy Batsford (Housing, Leisure and Community Engagement Portfolio Holder) commented on HOT’s Facebook page about this article: 

Why are you guys still running this story ? It is factually completely untrue. 

but was unable to explain further, despite several invitations to do so.

Now another and major problem has emerged.

Coastal Margin

In late February, Natural England published proposals for that part of the national coastal pathway between Eastbourne and Camber. The basis was set out in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 (Section 298), following the Countryside Right of Way (‘CRoW’) Act 2000.

The land from the pathway to the sea is known as the coastal margin, a single, continuous corridor of access around the coast. The coastal margin affords easy and extensive access to the coastal environment for open-air recreation, which is widely acknowledged to have significant benefits for human health and well-being.

Questions arise about this treatment of a publicly owned leisure asset. Why would the Council’s proposed new bylaws seek to restrict access to 40% of the Hastings Country Park Local Nature Reserve, including areas that are part of the proposed coastal margin? This is completely at odds with the central objective of the England coast path to improve public access to the coast. 

Local Access Forum

The East Sussex Local Access Forum (Laf) was formed in June 2003 as part of East Sussex County Council’s duties under the CRoW Act: 11 members have different interests, such as cycling or land-management. Lafs are statutory advisory bodies on improving public access to land in their areas for all types of open-air recreation.

Once the coastal path is approved then the coastal margins become active and ‘right to roam’ under CRoW applies. Byelaws can be imposed to restrict access under CRoW, but are subject to consultation rules through the Laf.

If HBC can get their proposed bylaws signed off by Defra in the month or so after 13 March, they can avoid consultation with the Laf. This would explain the unseemly haste by the Council to get the bylaws submitted and then confirmed by the Secretary of State.

Procedural breaches

In pursuing this end there have been apparent breaches of the HBC Constitution, including its opening:

This constitution sets out how the Council operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which are followed to ensure that these are efficient, transparent and accountable to local people.

In that managing the Country Park is a quasi-planning function, the Planning Protocol (adopted December 2013) also applies : 

[Quasi-] Planning decisions should be made openly, impartially, with sound judgement and for justifiable reasons. The process should leave no grounds for suggesting that a decision has been partial, biased or not well-founded in any way.  

Nolan and other principles

HBC’s hasty manœuvrings are also a breach of the Seven Principles of Public Life – the Nolan Principles – that apply to everyone in public office at all levels. Six of these are:

accountability
honesty
integrity
objectivity
selflessness, and
openness.

But not furtiveness. Two particular HBC virtues were asserted at the Cabinet meeting of 3 February (near the end of the 14-minute meeting), as one Councillor intoned:

I think it’s important that we as a Council show ourselves to be open, transparent, which is what we try to do at all times, and I share concerns at putting pressure on officers . . . 

This was the meeting that approved a smudgy grey unusable map (dated July 2014) attached to the agenda. Remarkably what then went to Full Council was a solid grey one (dated October 2014) which was approved with dogged haste.

At this 12 February meeting it was falsely stated that Members’ only options were to accept or reject the proposed bylaws. This was a clear breach of the Rules of Debate: Paragraph 16.10 e. of the Council Constitution, Part 4, under which they could have deferred a decision in order to clarify the situation, as requested by the Friends of the Country Park (and also expressed in a motion by Cllr Dany Louise).

Some reasons to object

These proposals are often not good enough. The threat to the coastal margin is in itself reason for the Secretary of State (George Eustice MP) to refuse these new proposed bylaws as an evasion of public policy, and unreasonable. Additionally there are failures of principle by HBC, and other, procedural, reasons: 

• map substitution (despite formal approval)
• misdirection of the Full Council over its options
• failure to consider seasonal rather than permanent closure of fields
• failure to provide any evidence of visitor abuse of the Country Park  
• secrecy about ‘full public consultation’ of legitimate and interested parties 
• the many delays and changes in the Country Park since 2014
• the threat to some rights of way, with no clarifying statement about this
• the criminalising of harmless activities that the 1974 bylaws did not mention.  

The Country Park is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (and much else).  It is too important for these proposed bylaws to be approved in their present form.  

The proposed bylaws can still be objected to. Comments should reach Defra by Friday 13 March, either by email (Protected.Areas@defra.gov.uk) or by writing to:

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
National Designated Sites Team
Local Nature Reserve Bylaw Case Officer
Horizon House (2nd floor)
Deanery Road
Bristol BS1 5AH

As for the coastal path (Reference EBC 5: Tackleway, Hastings to Cliff End, Pett Level), the deadline for making representations (not objections) to Natural England is Thursday 23 April. A filled-in form is required, which can be requested either by email (southeastcoastalaccess@naturalengland.org.uk) or in writing to

Coastal Access Delivery Team – South East
Natural England
Guildbourne House
Chatsworth Road
Worthing
West Sussex  BN11 1LD

The Country Park is an underrated asset of Hastings, publicly owned by the Council but regarded as held in trust by them. Many want it to be looked after better than it has been in recent years.

Also in: Home Ground

« Hastings and Rye fresh fish caught and delivered to your door!
Can Hastings create a food network? »