Solar panel games at Rocklands

Hastings Country Park and its environs are still the subject of contentious planning matters. What are the lessons supposedly learned? Now there’s another retrospective application. The débâcle goes on — as you can find out next Sunday afternoon (15 November). Bernard McGinley reports.

Hastings Country Park continues to provoke unease across the borough.  The one-time bucolic showpiece now represents something troubling — perhaps selfishness, attention deficit disorder, incompetence, indifference or worse.  The notorious Bunker remains an unresolved case (and from some perspectives, the planning permission for the Bunker is theoretically still extant).  Cases such as the digging up of the Firehills, and the visitors’ centre at Fairlight (planning ref HS/FA//14/01033) also illustrated the threats to the unspoilt Country Park.  Warren Cottage was sold off and expanded (HS/FA/14/00893): the tree screening mentioned in the planning committee report’s conclusion as a condition of planning permission (and decided by the committee) is not quite there in the actual condition (3), ‘imposed in the interests of visual amenity’. Oops.

Now an array of solar panels threaten at the edge of the Country Park, at Rocklands Caravan Park. This is where the Bunker still looks out malevolently over the English Channel, beside the landslides that have closed the public path at that part of the Country Park.

The saga of the Bunker remains unresolved, and led to last year’s Bahcheli Report into the administration of the Rocklands case by the planning department of Hastings Borough Council’s (HBC). This in turn led to some detailed commentaries on the Bahcheli Report (as also here). (There was also an addendum Bahcheli Report, on the careless history of caravan licensing at Rocklands.)

Mistakes have been made but lessons have been learnt, the council suggests. But have they? The same caravan park is now making a retrospective application for solar panel planning permission, again. (The planning ref is HS/FA/15/00528. A previous case in the summer – HS/FA/15/00525 – was paused, then superseded, then disappeared from the records.)

This new application is for ‘retention’ (in the jargon) for solar panels overlooking the Country Park. The panels are already there ‘for an indefinite period’ (and have been since 2012), but the planning permission is not. In 2014, a planning contravention notice was served (HBC Cabinet paper of 1 December, Agenda Item 5, para 26).

Adding insult to injury, the present application has been presented as a ‘householder application’, as if the planners can’t tell – or don’t mind – that the caravan park is clearly a thoroughly commercial business.

This could be grounds for invalidity — but this has not happened. The ‘householder’ pretence has been abandoned however and the matter is to be readvertised.

Concerns are many — such as that some of the panels and cabling are on a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SAM), an Iron Age hill fort from the 1st century BCE.  However, Scheduled Monument Consent was not obtained — a clear breach of the Ancient Monuments and Archæological Areas Act 1979. Historic England (formerly English Heritage) have objected. This may be crucial to the outcome of this case.

The solar panels breach several policies from the Local Plan (adopted 2014) such as EN7 (Conservation and Enhancement of Landscape) and FA5 (Strategic Policy for Eastern Area). They conflict too with AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) advice and other official guidance.

The application papers are misleading in various ways (such as understating the size of the panels), and the planning department have failed to follow proper procedures — such as the council’s Statement of Community Involvement (2011). Over 400 people objected to application HS/FA/14/1036, whose definition had two parts:

Retention of holiday let building  . . .  and

Relocation of solar panels

These objectors however were not then notified of this later application, despite council assurances that scrutiny would be improved and that objectors would be kept fully informed of all future developments relating to the caravan park.

In further procedural corner-cutting, the council’s planning department also failed to notify neighbouring properties correctly, or at all. The neighbour notification list is blank — which for the Bunker and other applications it was not.

Additionally the setting of an AONB is affected, for which remedy exists under Sections 84 and 85 of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. Similarly the setting of the Old Town Conservation Area (which extends to Rocklands) is a consideration.

The Country Park’s status as a Nature Reserve, Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is being quietly ignored. While Rocklands as a business is entitled to seek commercial advantage through (for instance) expansion, that should be within the constraints of the planning system — not through the persistent disregard of it. Much worse is the impression given that the planning department is inconsistent and lax, and not applying the system in a fair and even-handed manner. No sooner does one controversy die down than another springs up. Cumulatively this looks unimpressive. Recorded public opinion is intense and extensive about what is being allowed to happen to Hastings and St Leonards.  Meanwhile an HBC report (para 30) records dully, ‘The need for staff training and improved oversight of response is identified as a need arising . . . ’.

The campaign to protect the Country Park goes on. The Friends of the Country Park are among those who support it. Many objections have already been made. A public meeting at 3 o’clock next Sunday (15 November) at the White Rock Hotel will discuss this state of afffairs. The Save Ecclesbourne Glen group will discuss with those present the current situation and possible ways forward. Council participation is expected.

Opinions on the application (ref HS/FA/15/00528) can be emailed to the council until 4 December at dcenquiries@hastings.gov.uk or sent to HBC at Aquila House, Breeds Place, Hastings TN34 3UY.

It is possible that the planning committee will be swayed by the green, ‘cuddly’, renewable-energy argument, and approve the application — but there are many reasons, policy and administrative, why they should not. The Country Park is an economic asset for the borough as well as an aesthetic and health-giving one, highly sensitive and deserving of special protection (as through the High Weald AONB Management Plan 2014-2019). There may be other sites at the back of the caravan park where the thirteen panels could go, unseen from the Country Park.

A retrospective application for such an important site is seen by many as insulting, as an incitement to scofflaws. Residents continue to wonder why the caravan park should be indulged any further, when the benefit of any procedural doubt was long ago forfeited through unauthorised works and the Bunker. They also wonder when the council and its planning department will seek to defend Hastings, to protect and enhance what we still have, instead of doing the opposite. The formal explanation of course is that each case is decided impartially on its own merits. Case closed.

 

All photos by Bernard McGinley.

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