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Hollington Valley, shorn of its trees.

QGR tree-felling signals ‘need for real change’

This has not been a good month for the town’s green spaces – following council approval for the Queensway Gateway Road last month, contractors working for SeaChange Sussex have felled trees along a wide swathe through Hollington Valley where the road will run. This is an act of environmental vandalism, says Andrea Needham of Combe Haven Defenders.

SeaChange Sussex wasted no time in beginning what they call ‘vegetation clearance’ (and anyone else would call tree-felling) in the Hollington Valley local wildlife site in order to make way for the Queensway Gateway road. Just weeks after being granted planning permission, contractors moved in to start chopping through an “invaluable and irreplaceable” site.

It’s worth quoting at length from the Site Designation Report for Hollington Valley, which states that:

Hollington Valley, as was.

The site represents an excellent matrix of wildlife habitats which form part of the greater Hollington Valley which has the Hollington Stream and associated woodlands running its course. The valley forms a very major wildlife corridor and one of the best wildlife habitats within the Borough.

It is essential [Hollington Valley] is recognised as an invaluable and irreplaceable habitat of  excellent quality and an asset for the people of Hastings to enjoy.

The meadow represents one of the few remaining and certainly one of the best examples of this habitat type, with associated habitat complexes, left in the Borough. The rich variety of meadow flowers are the primary food source for an array of butterfly species, insects and moths.

All this richness notwithstanding, Hastings Borough Council granted SeaChange Sussex planning permission to build a road through the middle of it.  The main purpose of the road, according to Hastings’ Head of Planning Ray Crawford in his statement to the planning committee, is to “provide access to the allocated employment sites.” What he’s referring to is Hollington Valley: almost the entire site is allocated in the Local Plan as an employment area (in other words, yet another business park).  Once it’s built, only tiny areas of green space will remain; almost the entire site will be covered in concrete.

In his presentation to the planning committee, SeaChange director John Shaw dismissed concerns about the environmental impacts, claiming that, “84% of the wildlife site lies outside the planning application boundary.”  Whilst that may be true of the planning application for the road, his claim is disingenuous in the extreme, taking no account of the business park (planning permission for which will be sought at a later date) which is the whole point of building the road.

Despite protests, the tree-felling continues.

Protesters, alerted to the destruction, tried to get in the way, but police were called, people shoved around heavy-handedly and arrests threatened.  The police sent along an evidence gatherer, who was keen to film hours of ‘evidence’ of people peacefully protesting, but not so keen to gather evidence of the criminal destruction of one of our green spaces.

Go to Hollington Valley today and the place is unrecognisable. Contractors have clear-cut through the middle of the valley. Hundreds and hundreds of trees lie on their sides. Ancient hedgerows have been chopped to the ground. Birds fly around in distress uttering alarm calls. The spring has been poisoned with oil (we don’t know who did it, but it seems an odd coincidence that it happened when the contractors were on site). Where once was a perfect little green space, with rich meadows, wonderful trees and a little stream meandering down the valley, there is simply devastation.

SeaChange Sussex are not the only villains in this piece. The South East Local Enterprise Partnership (Selep), which granted SeaChange £15m to build the road, could have refused funding. Hastings Borough Council’s planning committee could have refused planning permission, and demanded that SeaChange instead put their energy into filling the empty business parks they’ve already built. But lured by the frankly preposterous claim that the site will create 1,370 jobs, the board of Selep and Hastings councillors voted to destroy one of our most precious green spaces.

We need a change – a sea change, although not the John Shaw kind. We need a change of councillors, a change from SeaChange, a change from the unaccountable and unelected body that is Selep, and above all a change from the mindset that what Hastings needs is more and more unfillable business parks. We need money put into decent, sustainable, community-based jobs. We need to recognise that our green spaces have an inherent value that can’t be measured in monetary terms, but is about our need for space and quiet and contact with nature and preserving and enhancing biodiversity.  We need a real change.

 

All photos from Combe Haven Defenders.

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Posted 16:44 Saturday, Mar 28, 2015 In: Home Ground

1 Comment

  1. DAR

    Yeah…and why do we “need” more jobs and houses and roads and business parks? You do the maths.

    Comment by DAR — Sunday, Apr 5, 2015 @ 14:20

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