Missed chance of salvation for Bexhill Town centre

When I was campaigning to become a councillor the most significant desire from most of my residents was the desire for change. They wanted to see a more vibrant and improved Bexhill that would address the ever changing population and make it a unique place to live and work.

The opportunity for a significant sum of government money to support change by creating a safe, healthy and more economically viable town centre environment with no cost to the local tax payer is ‘Manna from Heaven’. It was for a temporary scheme that would give us a real experience of how it might work, to have car free zones, to create safe walking and cycling areas, try to combat access issues for our elderly and disabled and support business recovery.

The life of our town centre would have no longer been dependent on what the businesses alone had to offer, but would have dovetailed with the activities, markets and café culture in the social space around them.

I don’t think for one minute that I fantasise or have a romantic view of how we might see change in Bexhill, as suggested by Howard Martin of the Chamber of Commerce and Cllr Deidre Earl-Williams in last week’s Observer. What I do know as fact is that the proposal from the Chamber of Commerce to ESCC did not meet the criteria for funding. The congestion we see in Western Road from lorries and vans unloading and people trying to park will continue. Social distancing will be impossible on the south side of Western Road and will probably drive away our more nervous shoppers and worst of all the cafés will be unable to benefit from a change to their licence to extend their outside seating area for their customers, as afforded to other parts of the town.

We had the chance to make sense out of change, and that could have been our salvation.

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