£300,000 for town centre

The cash will be made available over three years and amounts to almost a third of the 990,000 pledged this week by English Heritage to put the heart back in five South Coast towns.

Worthing, Dover, Faversham and Maidstone gain lesser amounts. All five neighbourhood renewal schemes are for communities whose "economic base has floundered and led to decline," says English Heritage.

The welcome news comes hard on the heels of the massive SEEDA regeneration grant for Bexhill and Hastings.

The 300,000 for Bexhill is the largest sum available under the Heritage Economic Regeneration Schemes (HERS) programme and comes in response to a Rother council bid. The cash will help Rother provide grants to repair the town centre's tatty image.

Delighted Rother planning officer Les Robinson said on Tuesday: "We put up a specific programme and we indicated the percentages we expected to put in to repair, embellishments, the public realm and enhancements, so we are talking in terms of repairing elements of buildings which are important to the character of Bexhill.

"We are talking about putting back features of buildings which have been lost over the years.

"And we are talking about enhancing the appearance of particular buildings.

"A good example is making sure that better shopfronts go in, rather than less good ones, and making grants available for that.

"Then there's expenditure in the public realm such as street-scapes, tree-planting and better lighting. There are bits above the shopping frontages where money ought to be spent and maybe this will encourage a bit of private investment."

Mr Robinson says: "The grant is recognition first of all of the quality of the town. We have been struggling down the years to convince them that Bexhill was worth spending money on.

"Secondly, it means that in order to get it the council has to be prepared to invest a similar sum of money. That means that cash is available to encourage private investment. So, what starts out as 100,000 a year from English Heritage becomes a much larger sum when you see what else is going to be spent on the building as well.

"So that's good news and you have to add it into the other good news we have like the Minister's decision in relation to the Task Force bid. There might be matching money to come in from that for various schemes, or at least complimentary money."

p English Heritage says co-ordinated action is needed to tackle Bexhill's problems particularly areas like St Leonards Road.

"Bexhill town centre is a planned development of 1895-1905, resulting from an agreement between the landowner, Earl De La Warr, and London builder John Webb. It was seen as providing the commercial heart to a new town east, west and north of the railway.

"The buildings were largely faced in a warm red stock brick with slate or tiled roofs. Distinctive features include several neo-Baroque and Queen Anne revival buildings and Dutch gables. There is a unified and individual overall character to the area."