Mid Sussex District Council discussing joint venture for redevelopment of Burgess Hill shopping centre

The saga of The Martlets has been dragging on for years, with multi-million pound redevelopment plans being hamstrung by a declining retail market, the pandemic and a lack of money.

During a meeting of the cabinet on Monday (July 15) members held a brief talk about the situation before closing the meeting to the public to have a deeper discussion.

Leader Robert Eggleston said the reason for months of silence on the issue had been because the council was involved in ‘highly complex commercial, technical, financial and legal work on what is a joint venture proposal with NewRiver’.

The venture proposes that the council and NewRiver unite their respective landinterests – freehold for the council, leasehold for NewRiver – into a Special Purpose Vehicle which will be jointly owned.

A Special Purpose Vehicle is essentially a separate company with its own assets, which would be protected should either the council or NewRiver go bust.

Mr Eggleston said: “I acknowledge how frustrated residents are with the failure to bring forward redevelopment at The Martlets Shopping Centre.

“As a resident of Burgess Hill myself for many years, I share and understand everyone’s concern and, indeed, pain at this situation.”

He stressed that any decision would ‘start with the council and end with the council’, not just the will of members of the cabinet.

Adding that he would love to promise a ‘quick and easy answer but would not sugar coat the situation’, he said: “The fact that we have made progress is good, is excellent. But there is a lot of difficult work still to do. And until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed.

“This is a marathon not a sprint – this is a journey not an event – and we’ve got lots of work still to do.

“We have made progress but we are by no means at the end point.”