Town's future: Debate hots up

With only days to go before the deadline on public consultation, both sides have been scoring points.

A major protest took place yesterday.

Sea Space boss John Shaw has accused objectors to seafront development of "misinformation" in a bullet-point article for the Observer and warned that if Government regeneration cash is not used it will be lost to the town.

"The clock is ticking for Bexhill," he warns.

But the Save Our Seafront campaign has sprung a legal surprise.

It revealed that it has submitted a formal application under the Commons Registration Act for the Metropole site to be declared a "town green."

The attestation was backed by 13 signatories who declared that they'd had the use of the land as public open space for the last 20 years. Rother can object to the submission - but it will take time.

Save Our Seafront campaigners had a banner with them proclaiming 12,500 signatures opposing the suggested 60-bed hotel development on the Metropole site when they attended Monday's meeting of Rother services committee.

Yesterday afternoon, they handed in the petition at the town hall during a demonstration outside the building to coincide with a meeting of Rother planning committee.

The scrutiny committee meeting heard an "enough is enough" call from Cllr Stuart Wood.

He claimed that in the face of such public outrage at the scheme Rother was "wasting time" in discussing it further. Cllr Eveline Armstrong described the hotel project as looking like "something from Outer Space."

But in a Rother press release, Cllr Stuart Earl in his role as cabinet lead member for regeneration, has revealed that so far only 300 responses had been received to the consultation document Bexhill-on-Sea - The Next Steps.

In one of a series of meetings in which Rother leaders have been explaining regeneration proposals to town organisations, Cllr Earl told Bexhill 41 Club this week that he recognised that the controversial issue could have been better handled.