Plans to expand Hastings industrial estate

Am outline planning application has been submitted to the council to create an additional 4,000 sqm of floor space on the northern side of Ivyhouse Lane Industrial Estate, along with a new access road between Burgess Road and Haywood Way, parking for 90 cars and 20 bicycles and external landscaping.

The application, produced by RGP Architects for Hayland Properties Limited, states, “The Ivyhouse Lane Industrial Estate comprises a range of predominately smaller industrial and warehouse units and is popular with local businesses in the Hastings area.

“The site comprises a key employment site which will provide much-needed high quality commercial floorspace for the Hastings area.

“The proposals address, and are sympathetic to, the ecological and landscaping considerations of the area and offer an opportunity to formalise and enhance the northern extent of the Ivyhouse Lane Industrial Estate.”

The site is mainly woodland, scrub and grassland and the application straddles land within both Rother District Council and Hastings Borough Council, so applications have been submitted to each local authority.

If the application gets the go-ahead, the buildings are likely to be metallic grey, with a low pitched roof with a single glazed entrance and roller shutter service door.

Each of the units will be single storey with an eaves height of 5.5m – the same height as Northride Park, a 2007 development of similar units on the Ivyhouse Lane Estate.

The site will be secured using steel mesh fencing painted green.

Developers say they need to cope with the ‘sloping topography of the land’, the presence of overhead cables and the presence of the Ore Tunnel, which passes under part of the site. They also believe there will be a need for a landscape/tree buffer along the ‘sensitive’ northern and eastern fringe of the site.

Surveys carried out at the site have confirmed the presence of dormice.

The application states, “The proposed works will require the loss of dormouse habitat at the site. The proposed mitigation, which includes a sensitive clearance of suitable dormouse habitats and habitat enhancement at the site, will ensure the Favourable Conservation Status of Dormice is maintained at the site.”