New action on dangerous pavements

The group is seeking an early meeting with county highways officers, who say they are subject to a tight budget and are up against Rother council s insistence on retaining paving slabs in the town centre conservation area.

Action group chairman Steve Ayres said: The issue was well publicised throughout the Summer with daily reports of people tripping on the paving stones.

Injuries have occurred. We re now going into Autumn and still very little appears to be done.

If the town centre and tourism action group had the money and the authority, we d be out there repairing the pavements ourselves!

But neither our group nor Rother District Council has the authority to look after the pavements in Bexhill. It s the responsibility of East Sussex County Council.

But we can exert pressure. So we will be seeking an early meeting with top officials at East Sussex County Council to see what s going to be done and when.

A county council spokesman said: We are bound by a very tight budget. What we would like to see in Bexhill is asphalted pavements because they are easier for us to maintain and safer for older people to use than paving slabs. However, the town centre is a Rother council conservation area.

This is our problem, we have a trip factor of just under one inch and it is very difficult with slabs to get it lower than that and older people find it difficult to pick their feet up.

I am sure our officers would be happy to meet the action group.

The action group says the pavement campaign is the first in a series of initiatives it will be launching on behalf of Bexhill Regeneration Partnership, an alliance of public and private bodies.

The action group, which has funding from Rother, has specific responsibility for reviving the town centre and encouraging tourism.

Steve Ayres said: After 18 months of hard work, a three-year business plan for the town centre was recently approved by Rother.

In the coming weeks, we ll be announcing details of some of our short and long-term projects.

The programme gets a major launch at the De La Warr Pavilion on September 27.

It will prove highly beneficial to traders and business people, said Mr Ayres.