Hastings’s Gateway Road is a disaster

Cllr Godfrey Daniel (Call for urgency on uncompleted Hastings road, 24 June) is demanding a ‘definite timeline’ for finishing the Queensway Gateway road. According to funder, the South East Local Enterprise Partnership, this fiasco of a road is now over four years late.

Not only that but it is also vastly over budget (it was supposed to cost £6 million, but is now estimated to cost £10m+).

In the course of building this road, SeaChange Sussex has destroyed what was Hollington Valley Local Nature Reserve, formerly a beautiful green space with mature oaks, bluebells, dormice and other protected species.

The oaks and bluebells are long gone, replaced with half a road.

SeaChange plans to turn what remains of the site into yet another business park. This is despite the fact that it can’t fill the two business parks it’s already built on Queensway. One of them, the North Queensway Innovation Park (within spitting distance of the Queensway Gateway Road) has been standing empty for years. Yet SeaChange is ploughing ahead with yet another business park – like the others, overwhelmingly paid for from public money.

Opponents of the road warned years ago that this road would be a natural and economic disaster. We have been proved right.

We are facing catastrophic climate change and massive species loss. To be building new roads at this point in history is utter folly.

Godfrey Daniel refers to the traffic building up in the area now that lockdown is over. He might do well to spend a bit more time thinking about how to promote sustainable transport, and a bit less promoting yet another new road.

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