WHISPERING SMITH: Kept in the dark as our lamp posts are switched

The fact that the road is in a conservation area and there was a chance here to replace the existing lights with something more in keeping with this status seems to have been overlooked. A missed opportunity and, not surprisingly, one that is in danger of being repeated along the eastern end of South Terrace, Norfolk Gardens and the attractive eastern end of Western Road, all currently lit by lamps on ‘heritage’ poles.

These steel posts and lamps are in one of the last of the surviving areas of architectural note in the town and must be retained and not replaced with the new green ones installed in the rest of Western Road and South Terrace.

West Sussex County Council offers differing and confusing answers when approached and residents in the affected area are, quite rightly, irritated with the current exchange but, I suspect, their howls of anguish will, as is usual with local government, be completely ignored and uniformity on the grounds of cost, will be maintained.

Why don’t these authorities ask us and then listen to what we say, before going their own sweet way?

I NOW fear that we are likely to see the Windmill site sacrificed for a hotel or housing, as did we all fear and foresee from the very start.

After squandering yet more of our money, this time £28,000 on consultants, Arun is now quite openly hinting that the solution might be just that, and with any money made from the sale to be spent on a new leisure complex elsewhere, somewhere, sometime never…

Come on Arun, a planned sell-off has always been in the background and we knew it, but vainly hoped that opposition to such a blatant move against the wishes of the townsfolk could not be ignored.

Now it seems that even our Littlehampton town mayor Joyce Bowyer appears to agree that such a move would be to the greater good and to the ‘benefit’ of the local community. Time to get back in the fight folks…