East Sussex residents 'furious' at treatment of road outside housing development

There were angry scenes as people living on Marshfoot Lane lined the road to block vehicles attempting to get onto the Old Marshfoot Farm site, following what one resident described as eight months of ‘complete misery’.

Neil Stone, Marshfoot Lane resident, said: “I’ve never known an application like this, it has been absolutely horrendous.

“Every time I go out my front door I see the crap that goes on and no one takes responsibility for it. No one is listening to us and nobody seems to be doing anything."

National housebuilder Vistry Group was granted full planning permission by Wealden District Council (WDC) in November 2021 for a 300-home development at Old Marshfoot Farm, off of Marshfoot Lane, and started work at the site in April 2022.

Residents decided to protest last week to raise specific concerns around traffic movements, the timings of construction deliveries, mud on the roads and inconsiderate parking of construction vehicles working on the site.

Neil explained: “There is only one way in and out of Marshfoot Lane, so right now it must be one of the busiest through roads in East Sussex, possibly England.

“Lorries have to turn onto the pavement and go up the curb, which is where the pedestrian crossing is and goes over the grass verge. The grass verge through the chicane is now utterly ruined, as it was not suitable for HTVs.

“All these vehicles are parking on yellow lines that were painted for the safety of the site at the far end of the road on a junction, forcing members of the public to drive up the footpath to get round them or park on the junction, where it is difficult enough to turn in any way and has now obscured our view.”

Neil says at one point around 30-40 vehicles were using the road to get onto the site each day, leaving the road with more than 50 potholes the size of footballs.

Neil continued: “Only this morning [January 24] a skip driver was coming up the road and he was bouncing all over the place. He got to where me and my neighbour were standing and said ‘this road is criminal, how have they let it get like this?’”

Residents had also been told by the council that there would be no deliveries or work carried out on the site on weekend or bank holidays.

However, on Saturday (January 14) residents were awoken at 8am by concrete lorries driving down the road to the farmhouse site.

Neil said: “After 8 months of complete misery the final straw came on Saturday [January 14] when, contrary to a condition set by the council of ‘no deliveries on weekends or bank holidays’, we had concrete lorries arriving from just after 8am, when the site shut at 1pm for the weekend.

"We had the noise and fumes from a generator they had left running until Monday morning.

“So on Tuesday morning [January 17] at 7am a group of residents had a demonstration and stopped most of the Vistry Group site traffic.

“We handed out leaflets explaining that as our day of relative peace and quiet on Saturday had been ruined we were having it today and suggested they park in the free public car park in Vicarage Lane and walk to work.

“Things got a little heated with one resident refusing to move and being pushed back slightly by a van - nothing serious with no injury or damage done. One of the site managers attended and when he was shown photographic evidence of the concrete lorries actually on their site and leaving it he was adamant it was another site.

"We were resolute in our stance but unfortunately in all the traffic that was starting to develop there were several teachers for the school and so we did the reasonable thing and opened up the road.”

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Samuel Batchelor, WDC Planning & Environmental Services development manager, told Neil the council have no effective enforcement powers for these ‘highway-related issues’.

He pointed out jurisdiction for enforcement of highway-related matters, in the main, sat with either East Sussex County Council (ESCC) or Sussex Police.

In an email to Neil, Samuel said: “Because we cannot enforce doesn’t mean the matter has been ignored. We have still raised it with the developer and ESCC have negotiated the use of a marshal -stationed on Vicarage Lane – to control the movement and timing of larger construction traffic, which has been somewhat effective at controlling site traffic.

"However, other matters like inconsiderate contractor parking cannot be enforced by the Council and only Sussex Police can enforce should there be a danger and/or obstruction of a highway/footway.”

Neil feels those in charge are simply ‘passing the buck’ between each other.

Neil said: “They make excuse after excuse, pass the buck from one authority to the other and will not take any sort of responsibility for policing the failures.

“The residents here accepted the building development when it went through the process and was granted permission. We accept that, what we don’t expect is the disturbance they are causing which is over and above what they should be doing. We all reasonable, we have been treated un-reasonably, the ball is in the court now.

"We didn’t want to be out at 7am in temperatures of -4 degrees but we felt we had no choice and hope that just a couple more hours of us suffering will bring about some sort of change to make our lives far more acceptable for the next 4-5 years.”

The Vistry Group have been approached for a comment.