The trick is working with the people...

It was inevitable that, once again, Bexhill would be branded reactionary for having so roundly rejected the Seaspace scheme for a new hotel on the Metropole site.

The debate was in many other respects a wholly worthwhile enterprise.

Rother was exercising a seldom-used facility to invite partners ranging from representatives of the county council and Hastings council to the primary care trust to contribute ideas towards an update of the two year-old plan.

No punches were pulled. And that's how it should be if real progress is to be made.

But that failed hotel project still hangs like a millstone round Bexhill's neck.

The continuing suggestion is that by having the temerity to reject Seaspace's scheme Bexhill has turned its face against the principle of regeneration as an entirety.

There was even a reference that in future the decision-makers should ignore placard-bearing protesters.

These arguments miss the point entirely. It is time the real lesson of the hotel scheme was learned for if not future regeneration plans could also run into trouble.

The placard-bearers did not oppose a hotel on the Metropole site because they were reactionary but because the scheme was a classic case of "right idea '“ wrong site."

It was not the principle of regeneration which was opposed but the dogmatic insistence that Bexhill should have regeneration in the form the planners wanted whether the electorate favoured it or not. For regeneration to succeed it needs to work with the will of the people, not against it.

Monday's 90-minute pre-council debate threw up many challenges. These ranged from the external '“ principally the crisis in the global economy '“ to the local, such as getting more of our young people into higher education and training.

The complex and inter-linked difficulties facing authorities like Rother was graphically illustrated by one on-going problem in particular.

The 2006 corporate plan identified as a key objective the multiple deprivation suffered in a number of wards in what is seen as an "affluent" area of the South East.

In those two years this deprivation has worsened rather than improved.

A national economy teetering on the brink of recession will do nothing to ease this pressing and vexing question.