Outcry at Ridge chicane

An Outline Application has been made for an undeveloped site beside St Helen’s Church on the Ridge, for 65 dwellings. Objections are already approaching 150. Campaigners have a plan for 34 dwellings that better addresses issues of traffic, environmental damage, wildlife, flooding and quality of life. Bernard McGinley reports on views about Sandrock Bends.

At the kink in the Ridge, just west of the Cemetery, a planning application has outline proposals. The case is HS/OA/25/00219 for:

Outline Permission for the erection of up to 65 dwellings (C3), public open space, landscaping and sustainable drainage system (SuDS) and vehicular access. All matters reserved except for means of access. | Open Space adjacent to Sandrock Park and North of St Helen’s Church including The Lodge, 309 The Ridge, Hastings

The proposal is to build ‘up to 65 dwellings’, but the indicative capacity (specified in the Hastings Development Management Plan 2015 under Policy SH1) is 80 dwellings. The possibility of more units – as has happened repeatedly at the Archery Ground – is a live one therefore.  The Council’s Draft New Local Plan’s gives an indicative capacity of 140 units on the site (HL19, formerly SH1). 

The developer is Gladman Developments Ltd: ‘With over 25 years’ experience in obtaining planning permissions, we are the UK’s most active and successful land promoter.’  Gladman were taken over by Barratts in 2022. Barratts became Barratt Redrow in 2024.

In February 2024, both Barratt and Redrow were among eight British housebuilders named by the official regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), in an investigation into suspected breaches of competition. These include sharing commercially sensitive information with competitors, influencing the build-out of sites and the prices of new homes. In January 2025, the CMA extended its investigations into suspected anti-competitive conduct by housebuilders. The inquiry has yet to report.

In recent years, Gladman have developed a reputation as ‘predatory developers’ and been controversial in Horsham, Somerset, Market Bosworth, Faversham and elsewhere.

Gladman have developed a reputation as ‘predatory developers’ and been controversial in Horsham [LINK], Somerset, Market Bosworth and Faversham [LINK] and elsewhere.

Vague

The casefile documents have a tendency towards some sort of planning piety. The Design and Access Statement is in two parts. Proclamations of quality are many but the document is less than persuasive. One section in its entirety reads:

E. Blue Infrastructure

An attenuation basin within the open space will provide sustainable drainage solutions, habitat creation, and enhanced visual amenity.

Another is:

A memorable character: Create places that are memorable.

Response: The design approach retains the existing vegetation wherever possible which will give immediate character for the development. At a detailed design stage, architectural details / materials would reference local character and spaces within the site that have been considered for character benefits.

This is thin stuff. The Appendix, ‘Building for a Healthy Life’, is a miscellany of aspiration and generality — mood music, and unsuccessful. Similarly there are platitudes on ‘Placemaking’ but nothing in the text on Grade 2 St Helen’s Church Ore which adjoins the site and is part of the Ore Place Conservation Area designated by Hastings Borough Council (HBC).

The wildlife corridor giving access to St Helen’s Woods (and the High Weald AONB [Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty] to the north) is under threat, affecting deer, rabbit, great crested newts, badgers, dormice, hedgehogs and a number of species of bats.

The application’s Ecological Impact Assessment has a badger survey report (Appendix D). Gladman asked for it to be treated as confidential (which the report also states in large red letters, p46). As with the County Council’s request about Conqueror Road case HS/FA/24/00244, HBC Planning Dept published it anyway. It’s as if planners don’t read documents.

The Travel Plan Framework document states airily of the site’s Public Right Of Way (PROW) that it ‘may require diversion’, but gives no further details. It makes three strange mentions of ‘Brethren’ without explaining what that is. Tribute is paid in para 2.2.9 to a dubious ‘Travel Plan Pyramid’:

the top layer of the pyramid relates to how the Travel Plan will be marketed and how the measures within are to be promoted.

Jargon is about maximisation and sustainability, as in para 3.3.1:

. . . the implementation of travel plan type measures can establish a pattern of travel behaviour favouring sustainable modes from the inception of the development.

Meanwhile there is no mention of pavements or Ridge footpaths.

Additionally the application form states that the site is not within an area at risk of flooding. This is peculiar, and is not what the Flood Risk Assessment actually says. Stormwater runoff in Shining Cliff and St Helen’s Park Road is a matter of increasing anxiety. The landslip at Old Roar Gill, relatively close by, remains unresolved.

Further details of the numbers and designs of houses and flats are not known at this stage. Tree Protection Order 172, which relates to the site, will probably be adjusted or revoked. A ‘Planning Statement and Section 106 Heads of Terms’ document discusses an intention to provide affordable housing, but previous such commitments (as near 777 the Ridge) have been easily sidestepped.

Save Sandrock Bends

A counterproposal is for 34 units: 20 flats and 14 houses. These would be well away from St Helen’s church, to help biodiversity. The campaign is by Save Sandrock Bends, with the support of the St Helen’s Park Preservation Society, and local group Stand Up For Nature Hastings & Rother (SU4N).

In recent years there have been sizeable developments in this area: at land near 777 The Ridge, Holmhurst St Mary, Harrow Lane Playing Fields and the Ashdown House site. Heavy traffic on the Ridge is notorious (and increasingly also so on radial routes such as Elphinstone Road). How much is too much? A recent meeting of Save Sandrock Bends drew hundreds.

Disimprovement

The Ridge used to be noted for its elegant villas and grand buildings, as Stephanie Reardon’s history The Ridge: the Evolution of an Ancient Hastings Highway (2014) showed. That was then. The Heritage Statement which accompanies the application is garbled.

Cllr Andy Batsford of the Hastings Independents has stated his opposition to the application and concern about flooding in St Helens Woods.

No indication has been given as to when the outline approval case will be decided.

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