Holiday resort at Normanhurst Estate near Battle refused planning permission

On Thursday (September 7), Rother District Council’s planning committee considered an outline application seeking permission to build 211 holiday lodges at the Normanhurst Estate — a 140 hectare parcel of private land within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).

With the scheme recommended for refusal, representatives for applicant Greystoke Land sought to impress the committee by laying out what they considered to be benefits of the scheme, including an economic boost for the district as a whole.

Councillors ultimately judged that these benefits would be outweighed by the harm to the AONB, however.

Cllr Jimmy Stanger (Ind), who put forward the motion to refuse the application, said: “My [concerns] just come down to size and scale really. Where it is, in the AONB and the potential impact.

“I’ve walked around the area and we’ve seen it first hand. The size of these things, within the trees, within the environment. It is going to be very hard to hide and not to have any impact.

“But I think it is a very good application. If it were somewhere else, it would probably go through easier, but at the moment the balance is weighing towards the AONB.”

Several councillors put forward similar views. They included Cllr John Barnes (Con), who said: “I suspect if this were not in the AONB I would be looking at it quite sympathetically, because it seems to me this is an exciting concept and one that actually could benefit the area in substantial terms of income.

“The problem is the harm it will do. It may be short term but is irreversible.”

Officers said the development would result in “significant adverse impact on the landscape character, ecological features, and habitat dynamics of the AONB”. They also said the development would have had a significant impact on the village of Catsfield itself.

The refusal also takes into account concerns about the site’s access plans and sheer size of the scheme, which officers had described as being “akin to the development of a new village within the AONB.”

The proposals had also proven to be unpopular with local residents, who had submitted more than 730 letters of objection.