Establishment of town council for Bexhill gets official go-ahead

At a full council meeting on Monday (September 21), Rother District Council formally approved the formation of a town council for Bexhill, which will hold its first elections in May 2021. 

The decision follows on from a long-running campaign to establish such a council, which saw two major public consultations – known as community governance reviews – held over the past three years. 

Introducing the vote, cabinet member Cllr Christine Bayliss – and a former member of town council campaign group Democracy4Bexhill – said: “I shall be voting tonight on behalf of the 8,631 people who supported setting up a town council in the 2017 community governance review and who were ignored by the previous Conservative administration.

“I’ll be voting in favour to fulfill a promise I made at 2019 district council elections and the 788 people who voted for me in central ward Bexhill. I have a democratic mandate that even our opponents in Bexhill central can’t disagree with

“I’ll be voting in favour of the motion this evening to recognise the 1,729 people who said they wanted a town council for Bexhill in 2020. 

“My only regret in this whole endeavour is that campaigners like Margaret Jones and John Lee are not here to witness this historic occasion. They were deprived of seeing the formation of a locally-led town council. But we vote today to honour their memory.”

While supported by the majority of councillors – many of whom had campaigned on the issue during the 2019 local elections – some Conservative members raised concerns about its costs and potential impacts.

They included Cllr Mary Barnes (Con, Hurst Green and Ticehurst), who called for a delay to the formation of the council in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

She said: “There is one sector of the community that Cllr Bayliss hasn’t taken into account and that is the staff of Rother District Council. 

“We’ve lost a lot of staff just lately and following tonight’s discussion I think we will probably be losing more.

“I am very, very concerned about the workload we are actually putting on to our staff at this particular time. We’ve got Covid to think about and as we can hear from the health advisors to the government, we are expecting a spike in the number of cases. 

“Really this is the wrong time to be talking about a council. Please, please put it off for a year, just let everybody gather their thoughts.” 

Conservative group leader Carl Maynard also raised concerns about move 

He said: “What we are concerned – and always have been concerned – with is to give the very best value for money for residents, whatever tier of local government that may be.

“Within the Conservative group we have never had a whip on this matter [and] the arguments for and against have been very well-rehearsed.”

He added: “My own views about the town council are very well known I remain personally opposed for the reasons I have given on many, many occasions.”

Cllr Maynard went on to raise concerns around costs to residents and also took issue with a suggestion from Labour councillor Sam Coleman that the district council could look at ensuring its poorest residents pay no council tax at all. 

This, Cllr Maynard said, could see those residents worse off as it would cost the county council ‘half a million’, potentially leading to service cuts.

As the debate went on it, discussion moved on to the relevance of the 2019 local elections results, which saw Conservatives lose political control of the council. 

For Rother Alliance councillors the results showed a strong local desire for a town council in Bexhill, while some Conservatives attributed their significant losses to voters’ dissatisfaction around other issues.

Cllr Maynard said: “I’m not proposing to debate the outcomes of the elections last May, but members of the alliance would do well to remember that because of Brexit, because of Theresa May maybe and numerous other factors we did very badly in the local elections, not just in Bexhill but in the rural areas as well. 

“But don’t forget over 6,000 people voted Conservative still in Bexhill, across the whole of the town, considerably more than voted for the Labour party.

“The fact of the matter is we are here to represent all of the people, whether they voted for us or not.”

This view was not shared by Cllr Johnathan Vine-Hall, however, an Alliance cabinet member who also represents the same ward (Sedlescombe and Westfield) as Cllr Maynard.

He said: “I’m the only independent rural member in Rother District Council and the Bexhill Town Council was on my manifesto, dispute the fact that don’t live in Bexhill and none of the residents [of my ward do either].

“But to me it was a very, very important thing to achieve this, to bring Bexhill into parity with the rest of Rother.

“I won my election by a significant majority in what is a very deeply Conservative ward. I think Cllr Maynard’s comments might be taken in perspective of that.”

Following the debate, councillors agreed to form a town council, voting 16 in favour, six against with two abstaining. The vote was recorded.

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