READER’S LETTER: Enough is enough with Eastbourne housing targets

It was heartening to read your report on “Time to act on unsustainable housing targets and protect our beautiful green spaces” click here to read.

This is an issue that has been troubling many of your readers, and it is good to see it raised in the press.

I live in the south of Wealden, adjacent to the Pevensey Levels, between Eastbourne and Hailsham.

We have seen unprecedented amounts of house building in our area in the last 10 years, to the extent that Polegate, Stone Cross, Westham and Pevensey (once separate villages) have become a long conurbation, characterised by traffic jams and stationary traffic.

In Stone Cross and Westham alone, since 2015, major developments in Stone Cross have resulted in 742 new homes being built with a further 75 in process of constructions and a further 841 with planning consent that have yet to be started.

That brings the total of new homes in a small area to more than 1,657. Yet no new school places have been provided, nor is their any opportunity to extend the capacity of the GP practice.

Aside from issues of over development and urban sprawl, what we are losing is valuable farm land – to make profits for developers.

Given the current situation in Ukraine, and the real possibility of food shortages in coming months, this seems foolhardy. Once farmland is built on, it can never be reclaimed.

All this development is also having a devastating impact on Pevensey Levels – which are an internationally recognised site of specific scientific interest (SSSI) and protected by the RAMSAR convention.

We decry deforestation of the Amazon, but we are sitting idly by while developers destroy our own precious heritage.

By the time we get to make our feelings known in local elections it will be too late.

We need campaigns such as yours to raise awareness of this issue. The recent campaign to try to prevent the loss of Sharnfold Farm pick-your-own attracted more than 300 hundred supporters, following an article in the Eastbourne Herald, and publication of letters in the Opinion page. As you rightly say, people now feel that enough is enough!

For the latest breaking news where you live in Sussex, follow us on Twitter @Sussex_World and like us on Facebook @SussexWorldUK