READER’S LETTER: Troubling times ahead for Easbourne with housing targets

Well done the Eastbourne Herald and its sister titles for launching a campaign to protect the Sussex countryside.

For more than two years the Save the Sharnfold Farm Group have been struggling to resist the farm being converted into a large housing estate. The developer’s first approach to the planning department revealed their ultimate intentions to build up to 400 houses on what was at the time a flourishing pick-your-own business. Their first planning application was to build some 30 houses and to convert an historic barn into an arts / cultural centre.

After a lengthy battle the application for the houses was rejected but the change of use of the barn (notwithstanding it being a Listed building) was allowed.

We are aware that this is only a preliminary skirmish.

Appeals by the developers and / or further planning applications will inevitably follow. We suspect the financial prize is too great for them to leave the land purely for farming and fruit picking!

Our group has since morphed into the Stone Cross Action Group to widen its scope to oppose further developments / applications pending alongside the Hailsham Road leading to the Stone Cross Crossroads.

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. There are also pending applications for further building in the area, all of which seem to have the support of the planning officers and the statutory consultees.

Sight of the new Local Plan (albeit in draft form) for the Hailsham area is a troubling in the extreme. It portrays the genuine possibility of Hailsham ultimately merging with Stone Cross with developments along the rural corridor presently separating the two communities. It foretells Stone Cross merging with Westham and with Polegate, a process, which has already begun. We will be left with an “urban metropolis” with houses virtually identical to each other in design and with the destruction of areas of rural land, which cannot be retrieved.

The ultimate sanction for this sorry state of affairs is the ballot box. Clearly this troubled Mr Johnson as indicated by his declaration at the Tory party conference in October in which he reflected upon the damaging effect of mass house building in the region. He voiced the need for new homes and, as observed by the Eastbourne Herald, commented that: “it is not on green fields, not jammed into the south-east but beautiful homes on brownfield sites in places where homes makes sense.” We can but wait with bated breath for new regulations to issue to implement those grandiose words but as yet nothing has been forthcoming.

We have written to Mr Gove expressing the urgent need for action. However, the letter was merely deflected elsewhere and ultimately, what we suspect is a standard letter, was issued in response extolling the virtues of the Tory party for the number of new homes built but giving little hope the greenfield sites will be protected.

In the meantime greenfield sites such as Sharnfold Farm will be the targets for developers who can seemingly rely upon planning officers to help them achieve planning consent.

In short, we need more than mere “puff” by the Prime Minister.

We need regulations that will curtail the surge of development which is threatening to convert this region into a sprawling housing estate and which will really protect rural land. It is, after all, this land which provides a sustainable source of food for us all.

This is particularly important in the light of recent conflict in Ukraine, and the real possibility of food shortages in the near future.

Once farmland is built on it can never be reclaimed.

We are again contacting our local MP Mr Huw Merriman to urge him to make representations on our behalf to reduce the housing targets. Mr Merriman is the one person who has the ear of the Government. We look to him to intervene effectively to argue the case for a reduction in the housing targets set for the region. This is the only sure way of preserving the character of the area and the enabling the rural land to remain intact.

The present building feast, which threatens to overrun the Wealden District with the “beautiful new homes”, is hardly a vote winner when it urbanises and consumes precious Sussex countryside. As perfectly expressed by the Eastbourne Herald now is the time to take action.

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