SPOTLIGHT: Harbour flats plan sent back to the drawing board
The developer of a controversial seven-storey development of around 130 retirement seaside apartments must make changes to secure planning permission. Eastbourne Borough Council’s planning committee voted unanimously in a show of cross-party unity last night to defer the planning application for a site on the western edge of Sovereign Harbour. The main points of contention […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Residents hold ‘amicable’ meeting about ‘over-the-top’ flats plan
Sheltering on the east side of Martello Tower 66 from a howling southwesterly, Frances Lawrence and Caroline Lynam are philosophical about the fenced-off area nearby. It’s the site of a proposed seven-storey development of around 130 retirement apartments overlooking the sea on the western edge of Sovereign Harbour. The planning application by developer Untold Living, […]
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REVIEW: Taking the plunge with Eastbourne Alive
Silent concentration was interspersed with ‘oooh’s of delight and ‘oh’s of resignation as a group of us gathered for a printing workshop in the empty Motcombe Pool caretaker’s house in Eastbourne Old Town. We were experiencing the unpredictable process of printing using a flexible silicone gel plate rollered with paint then imprinted with images or […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Council leader objects to Sovereign Harbour scheme
The leader of Eastbourne Borough Council is among hundreds of objectors to a plan to build 137 retirement apartments next to the beach at Sovereign Harbour. Coun Stephen Holt wrote in his objection to his own council’s planning department that the development, which would be four metres higher than neighbouring blocks, was not in keeping […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Council agrees five-year lease for Fort Fun
The long-derelict Fort Fun site on Eastbourne seafront is scheduled to partially re-open by Easter with an indoor play area. But the former water park section, which had been earmarked for inclusive activities by Defiant Sports, will now instead be grassed over by Eastbourne Borough Council. The council has decided to award a five-year lease […]
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SPOTLIGHT: The volunteers who honour the dead
The tombstones, crucifixes, angels and inscriptions slowly emerge from the creeping ivy and smothering foliage as if in a fairy story. What looks like a bank of overgrown shrubs becomes a row of stone memorials, marking lives, families, connections, history. “I just find it really satisfying to clean them up, research people’s lives and find […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Why chalk grasslands are so important for all of us
By ecology-trained consultant Julie Bygraves, of Wild Bourne It’s hard to express how special a chalk grassland is – you just have to go to see one. It’s also hard to explain what it is: in genetic terms it’s an assemblage of rare plants on chalk! But the constituent species can vary enormously depending on […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Concern mounts over the future of fragile chalk grassland
I visit the scarp slope of the South Downs with an ecology-trained adviser and an Old Town local who has walked the area for more than 25 years to hear their fears about how scrub is encroaching on the rare chalk grassland. A company is paid £9,300 of public money a month to implement a […]
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SPOTLIGHT: How people power saved Fisherman’s Green
The controversy over plans to earmark the seafront site for housebuilding involved thousands of residents’ objections and the intervention of a Cabinet minister. It has now been taken off the list. We unpick what happened and talk to the women who successfully campaigned against the proposals Fiona Mullen and her neighbours had prepared for a […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Revamp for bandstand seats
More than 800 teak folding chairs are being sanded and varnished by offenders ready for the re-opening of the bandstand in the spring. A group working unpaid as part of the community payback scheme are painstakingly sanding and painting each chair behind the bandstand. A spokesman for Eastbourne Borough Council said: “It’s not actually costing […]
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