Lib Dems ask "Do you want a town council?"

Constituency party chairman Mary Varrall, secretary Jennifer Els and Bexhill Rother and county member Cllr Martyn Forster say 80% of the electors they have approached on the street or during door-to-door approaches favour a town council.

Bexhill was judged not ancient enough to retain a town council like Battle and Rye when Rother was created out of the merger of the three former independent authorities in 1974. It was too large to have a parish council like the rural communities in Rother.

Instead, the legislation of the day smoothed the ruffled feathers of local feeling by allowing Bexhill councillors serving on Rother to become the town's Charter Trustees. They can elect a Town Mayor from among their number but have no powers.

Current legislation requires a petition for town council status to bear the signatures of 10% per cent of the population before the Secretary of State can grant the establishment of a town council.

In Bexhill's case, this would mean between 4,200 and 4,500 signatures.

New legislation is angled at making it easier to establish town or "community" councils without recourse to the Secretary of State.

The Liberal Democrat volunteers say their campaign is not political or politically-motivated.

They say no costings exist for setting up a town council in Bexhill but say those at Battle and Rye are staffed by a full-time town clerk with secretarial help.

They say that having local council status has helped other communities in Rother to forge ahead with Local Action Plans and that though pilot work has been done in Bexhill in Pebsham and Sidley, the process would be quicker and simpler if there were a town council.

Mary Varrall says Local Action Plans make it possible to access Government funding, as obtained successfully by Battle for its local traffic-calming measures.

The campaigners argue that a town council could take over responsibility for:

*Street lighting

*Local transport and traffic services

*Allotments

*Cemeteries

*Recreation grounds

*War memorials

*Seating and shelters

*Rights of way

*Leisure amenities

*Sports provision

*Community safety

*Affordable housing

*Tourist information centres

*Litter and dog bins

This would leave Rother responsible for services like:

*Planning

*Housing

*Licensing

*Refuse collection

*Recycling

*Electoral services

*Coastal protection

*Environmental health

Cllr Forster says last Thursday's presentation to Bexhill members of Rother to inform them about the Rother Local Action Plan support programme illustrated the need for a town council.

Nine out of 18 members attended.

"Following much deliberation and discussion of ways and means, the group agreed that councillors would want to be involved and after looking at several models for dividing up the Bexhill area, that it should be carried out on a ward-by-ward basis.

"Government has driven this initiative and there is some money behind it. Rother is to receive a share of the start-up cash through the East Sussex Integrated Sustainable Community Strategy.

"There is a time-scale for this and we have approximately one year to deliver an outcome from the nine wards of Bexhill.

"There was much discussion on how to engage people and organisations, large and small in the process of producing LAPs for each ward.

"If councillors took on a role in helping to coordinate this work, it would be clearly in addition to their present duties, but could well enhance their role as community leaders, the meeting was told.

"Experience from the villages suggested that engaging local people in a local project, distributing literature or holding a meeting which featured a competition and other attractive events were some ways which had worked in pilot studies."