As from the New Year Hastings Borough Council will stop sending letters to notify residents of planning applications in their area. The move, confirmed at this week’s Cabinet meeting, has drawn a lot of criticism. Nick Terdre reports.
Local residents interested in commenting on planning applications which affect them will have become aware as they make their way through the developer’s documents of various common shortcomings – the poor quality of the English, sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and misrepresentations in the project descriptions, and in some cases the absence of important details. Bernard McGinley turns a critical spotlight on the proposed project at 21 Upper Maze Hill in St Leonards and finds plenty to alarm him.
When Save Ecclesbourne Glen (SEG) group requested documents which they believe will throw light on the causes of the landslip at Rocklands Caravan Park in the Country Park, Hastings Borough Council refused to release some of them. However, SEG’s complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been upheld and the council has now supplied the withheld documents. Nick Terdre reports.
Lodging a complaint with your local authority when you feel they have acted wrongfully or inappropriately is surely a democratic right. And one which has been exercised by local residents in response to a series of Council mishandlings, most notably the Rocklands scandal in the Country Park. It is therefore depressing, if not entirely unexpected, to see that in the face of often well-researched and thorough criticisms of their actions Hastings Borough Council has opted to sideline troublesome complainants by labelling them as ‘vexatious and vociferous’. Bernard McGinley lodges his own complaint about the bunker mentality being increasingly adopted in the Town Hall.
Rocklands, the Country Park, Sea Change projects – Hastings Borough Council’s handling of such planning and development issues spawn regular critical contributions to HOT’s columns and high levels of readership. We invited council leader, Peter Chowney to respond to some of the criticism, which he did in a recent interview with Nick Terdre.
This is a long article, but it needs to be to thoroughly cover all the details – and it’s also necessary, as so many of our readers care about this subject. Previous articles have generated lots of comments and feedback – and it seems to represent something much bigger that is happening within the town, writes Zelly Restorick. This report is from Chris Hurrell of Save Ecclesbourne Glen (SEG), who attended and gave evidence to the hearing. As you’ll read, I believe you will feel a sense of hope that this was a fair and inclusive hearing – and that the skilled, determined and tenacious group of individuals involved in SEG, who have invested so much energy and time, have truly made an incredible difference to this process. However, many questions concerning Rocklands remain unanswered.
Michael Madden is a stalwart supporter of the Labour Party, but not of the ruling Labour group on Hastings Borough Council. In fact he was recently expelled from the local Labour Party. Here he details his serious falling-out with his former party colleagues over the council’s attitude towards planning, and in particular its actions in the Country Park, and compares HBC with the council described in Robert Tressell’s fictional town of Mugsborough, a thinly disguised portrait of Hastings in the Edwardian era.
If the Aquila House planning officials get their way, the Rocklands ‘tree works’ planning application (HS/TP/16/00089) will be decided under delegated powers rather than go to the planning committee. Bernard McGinley asked why, but failed to get a satisfactory answer.
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