Plea to focus more community road safety works in Eastbourne and Hastings

On Monday (February 21), Cllr Claire Dowling, East Sussex County Council’s lead member for transport and environment, agreed for unused money from the authority’s Community Match programme to be spent on other road work projects.

The decision means around £750,000 is to be made available for a wide range of road improvement projects, which would not usually meet the council’s strict criteria for funding.

Cllr Dowling said: “I very much welcome the fact that the underspend is going to be spent on small-scale schemes that don’t currently fit our criteria.

“They are the schemes our residents and communities are asking for and have been asking for for a very long time.

“I think this is a very, very good news story and it is about getting the communications out there to make our communities aware that this is now available.”

Generally speaking, East Sussex County Council focuses its highways funding into works considered most likely to reduce deaths or serious injuries. 

The Community Match programme is an exception to this, however, as it provides funding for ‘lower priority’ works as long as a local group puts up half the money.

In recent years, however, the programme, which receives £250,000 per year, has significantly underspent, leaving it with around £990,000 of unused funds. 

As a result of Cllr Dowling’s decision, this unspent funding (and any unspent funding in future years) will be put towards small-scale projects requested by residents, such as traffic islands or dropped kerbs. 

The total available funding is expected to amount to around £750,000, as new Community Match schemes are likely to be approved in the coming months.

While the broader proposals were widely supported, some councillors present at the meeting raised concerns about how exactly the £750,000 would be allocated.

Among those to raise concerns was Labour councillor Godfrey Daniel, who argued the funding should be focused into areas without parish councils, such as Eastbourne and Hastings. 

He said this was because the Community Match scheme has a bias in favour of areas with parish councils, as they are more likely to have the funding available to pay for half of the project.

Mr Daniel: “I am always happy to pass money over to road safety interventions and the safe care of [officers] so I would support that. But I am slightly confused about when the report talks about ‘community focussed interventions’.

“Are we basically still talking about benefiting the parishes where there is a group of people jumping up and down?

“In some ways, given that the [Community Match] money has traditionally gone to Wealden, Rother and Lewes, because they have parish and town councils, perhaps we could have some of the schemes targeted at Eastbourne and Hastings.

“I think we are pretty fed up of being left out of this scheme, which is benefiting areas with parish councils and not benefiting to any extent places like Hastings and Eastbourne.”

There was support for this view from Eastbourne councillor Pat Rodohan. 

Despite these, officers said there were not plans to focus the funding in any particular area. 

According to council papers, the chosen works would look to address road safety concerns, cost no more that £40,000 and be identified by considering a range of issues and specific site characteristics.