SPOTLIGHT: Developer bids to replace one house with 20 flats
By Huw Oxburgh, BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporting Service A developer has submitted plans for an apartment building in Eastbourne to replace a large detached house. In an application submitted to Eastbourne Borough Council, a developer is seeking outline planning permission to demolish the home at 273 Kings Drive and replace it with a building containing […]
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SPOTLIGHT: Council paid developers more than £750,000
By Huw Oxburgh, BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporter Wealden District Council has paid out more than three-quarters of a million pounds in appeal costs since January 2021. The single largest payout resulted from the council’s decision to refuse the 700-home Mornings Mill development on farmland at Willingdon, Eastbourne, which was approved on appeal. One Labour councillor […]
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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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