Charity drops plans for holiday centre

CCHF All About Kids wanted to transform the nine-bedroom property Twisly, in Church Road, into a centre offering activity breaks for disadvantaged primary school children in the south, including parts of Sussex.

Rother District Council’s planning committee was due to discuss the application at a meeting on July 19.

But the evening before the application was due to be discussed, an objector to the scheme questioned the legality of the application as it stood.

Rother decided to consult its own legal team and decided to defer making a decision on the plans until a later date.

On Wednesday (August 15) CCHF announced it was withdrawing the application, saying it had to “consider all the financial costs involved”.

Lydia Davis, chief executive of CCHF said: “This has been a very difficult decision for us to make and we are hugely disappointed that we will not be taking forward our plans for Twisly. We would like to take this opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to all those from across the local community that supported our plans. We were overwhelmed by the letters of support, including a nearly 90-name petition submitted to the council supporting our plans for Twisly and the endorsement of Catsfield Parish Council. However, as a charity, we have to consider all the financial costs involved and with no reasonable end in sight for the planning process, we cannot justify committing the required resources. We also want to be able to start delivering much-needed breaks for young, disadvantaged children at new premises as soon as possible. We need to be able to plan for the future with certainty and we cannot do this at Twisly.”