Hastings Alliance

Recent heavy rain brought sudden and surprising change to the valleys’ wide and intimate landscapes: the main rivers – Combe Haven, Watermill Stream, Powdermill Stream and Decoy Pond Stream all swollen and gushing and gurgling into the main valley created lakes. It happens every year – but never ceases to thrill those who observe and enjoy uninterrupted natural forces and the explosion of spring into summer.

The effect of humanity on those natural processes and landscapes was the subject of three plays presented by Feral Theatre at this May’s Brighton Festival Fringe. The production, Triptych, focussed on extinction, habitat destruction, ignorance of our dependence on a high quality natural environment, and the tragic consequences that follow its incremental destruction. The Hastings Alliance were invited to mount a small exhibition describing Combe Haven and its unique amphitheatre of wonderful places. Many members of the audience signed up to hear more of our campaign.

The plays were staged in St Peters’s church, Preston Park and featured four actors and a simple set with very effective lighting, and choreographed shadow puppets depicting courtship of arctic curlews, music, mime, acrobatics and narrative. We very much appreciated this opportunity.

As for the backdrop to our continuing campaign, we are still digesting the realities of the  decision of the Department for Transport to part fund the scheme. Remember, there’s a shortfall to be made up by local council tax payers of a minimum of £33m, and the final sum is likely to be much higher, with no private sector money available and little or no developer interest. It must be remembered that in terms of ‘value for money’, this BHLR scheme was rated as bottom in the original list of 24 schemes in England chasing government funds. It still can’t be far off bottom in the expanded list of schemes receiving government money.

We continue to challenge the scheme and to gather information because, whatever the final result, the full story needs telling and will be told. It’s an awful scheme with a very shaky evidence base.

More soon: please visit the valley while tranquillity prevails.

If you wish to be kept up to date then please contact: derrick coffee – derrick.coffee@talk21.com or, nick bingham – nbing@metronet.co.uk

*In the long view (without horse) you can see Adams Farm, a grade 2* listed farmhouse with barn to the right. The barn is a bat roost and lies in the path of the proposed BHLR. This barn will be dismantled and rebuilt on another site. Bats have a European level of protection and the success of their relocation, close to a new road carrying 30,000 vehicles a day, remains a matter for speculation. We’d prefer they were left alone.

The two local papers – the Bexhill and Hastings Observers – received a dozen letters this week, with one more published as an article, expressing the conviction that the decision to part fund the BHLR to the tune of £56m, was the wrong decision. One correspondent reminds us that the true cost will very likely be over £100m, with the balance paid by local council taxpayers – hardly popular in, say, Lewes, Crowborough, Robertsbridge, Heathfield or Uckfield. The county council’s budget will need close scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead.

On the national scene, Local Transport Today (LTT) published its assessment of the BHLR story. LTT is a respected national publication read by local authority planners, and academics. All this is now here on the website and both letters and the LTT article can be read by following the links below beneath the poem.

In this post you’ll also be able to read a new poem by local, national poet Brian Moses, and see a 2005 painting by Peter Poole of the view of Combe Haven from Adams Farmhouse kitchen window. The view and setting of the 16th century farmhouse will be changed forever by the BHLR.

Sincere thanks for the many messages of support received in recent days, and for past support over many years. We will continue to make every effort to secure this very special and treasured valley for future generations to enjoy.

….As Joni once wrote in one of her songs

‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’  *

New Road

Trees have fallen silent,

their leaves done with whispering.

Birds and bees have nothing to say.

I no longer receive communications

on the breeze.

The stream does not share its secrets.

For the road that’s planned

through the valley

grows nearer

everyday.

And everything turns its face away

as I walk by.

Yet from different sides of the valley

fat cats are looking on,

purring appreciatively,

licking their lips.

There’s money to be made from this, they hiss,

there’s money to be made from this.

Brian Moses

LTT Battle of Hastings_NEW

Post Decision Hastings/Bexhill ObserverLetters

*On the website shortly:

-maps produced for East Sussex County Council showing the very special character of the irreplaceable Combe Haven and its tributary  valleys.

-news of the next stage of our campaign.

COMMENT AND PRESS RELEASE

Combe Haven – beautiful, tranquil, safe, for all the family – but not for much longer.

As we now all know, the highly speculative BHLR project received a £56m cash boost from government in the budget, leaving council tax payers of East Sussex to stump up the rest. With an absence of ‘developer contributions’ that could mean the total cost of BHLR and associated infrastructure could soar way past the £100m mark.

There is no question that the road scheme, which was levered in to the transport studies of 2002, will wreck a beautiful part of East Sussex, within walking distance of some of the most deprived wards of Hastings and Bexhill – and a great tourist and recreation asset for all. There is no equivalent asset available. Damage cannot be mitigated. This has been our inheritance; it should be our childrens’ inheritance.

The Hastings Alliance position remains the same: there is no proven need for the link road, either from a transport point of view, or to access development. There are highly likely to be alternatives. They have never been examined. A full and proper examination of packages of sensible, viable alternatives has been resolutely avoided by East Sussex County Council.

The Hastings Alliance will continue to report.

Our press release is below:

HASTINGS ALLIANCE

PRESS RELEASE – IMMEDIATE

BEXHILL TO HASTINGS LINK ROAD GO AHEAD – A MAJOR SETBACK FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The Hastings Alliance today reacted with great disappointment at the news of the go-ahead for the Bexhill to Hastings Link Road (BHLR).

Speaking for the Alliance, chairman Nick Bingham said:

“This is a failure at all levels of government to recognise a great opportunity to develop a showcase in Bexhill and Hastings for sustainable development and transport.

This would have given us – and more importantly, future generations – the best in high quality public transport, with cycling and walking routes in safe, green and pleasant streets: an example for the UK. Instead, with the publicly funded £100m link road encouraging more car trips, we will have traffic dominated developments and the worst in urban design, with more congestion problems ahead on all existing roads, and a growing carbon footprint. The pain is greater for it being a local road paid for with at least  £29m coming from local pockets.

With the car based development that will surely follow the link road, the alternatives will always be lagging behind and begging for investment that should rightly have gone to support their development, not increased car dependency.

There is no evidence that jobs claimed to follow the link road will actually materialise and no mandate for such speculative development using public funds.

The monument to the BHLR will be the wrecked inheritance to tomorrow’s residents – the outstandingly beautiful Combe Haven valley – with tens of thousands of motorists a day polluting and passing through it, saving themselves little time until traffic quickly grows and slows in the resulting congestion. Resulting increases in CO2 emissions too should not be acceptable. Our campaign continues”.

Speaking for Campaign for Better Transport – East Sussex, Derrick Coffee said:

“Reports commissioned by us and other groups show conclusively that the BHLR is very poor or even negative value for money, that alternatives have been set aside or ignored altogether, and that environmental damage has been seriously underestimated. The singular focus on the BHLR project has resulted in a lost decade of progress on alternatives, poor consultation and engagement with the public to design and deliver them, and a pretence that sustainable ways of accessing development land do not exist.

The cost to the public purse to the tune of £100m is unacceptable in any case, but to grant funds for an outmoded car based model of development irrelevant to the regeneration of Bexhill and Hastings at a time when funds are scarce is remarkable for its detachment from reality. Our opposition to the BHLR is undiminished”.

Hastings Alliance, Court Lodge Oast, Udimore. E. Sussex. TN33 6BB 01424 883319

nbing@metronet.co.uk

Campaign for Better Transport – East Sussex, Derrick Coffee, 9 Mayfield Place, Eastbourne, E Sussex. BN22 8XJ. 01323 646866

derrick.coffee@talk21.com

Early in the week beginning 12th March, Campaign for Better Transport sent out a press release to the national and local media on the subject of an appeal by the Alliance to Secretary of State Justine Greening not to fund the BHLR. The Hastings, Bexhill and Rye and Battle Observers picked up the story and published the press release in full. Meridian TV did too, and filmed a piece in the valley  at Ray and Laura Boggis’s Bynes Farm. BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey also picked it up. In each case Derrick got the callout and shared the broadcast with Cllr Peter Jones, leader of the county council.

Cllr  Jones  made the usual claims for the untold riches which would be delivered – along with a new one that the road’s benefit to Cost Ratio had shot up to a miraculous 10:1!  ‘Nonsense on stilts’ was the considered response of our expert to a rapidly commissioned report referred to by Cllr Jones.  Alliance predictions include a realistic scenario that in fact the ratio could well be in the realms of the negative.

The press release:

For immediate release

Green groups urge Government not to destroy environmental credentials by building destructive new road

Leaders of green groups have written to the Secretary of State for Transport urging her not to approve the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road on the basis it would do huge irreparable environmental damage without delivering the local regeneration claimed by road’s promoters.

Campaign for Better Transport, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth, Hastings Alliance, Sussex Wildlife Trust and Sussex Countryside Trust have written to Justine Greening urging her not to approve what they say is the most environmentally harmful and least economically justifiable road scheme currently being proposed in England.

Sian Berry, Campaign for Better Transport’s sustainable transport campaigner, said: “We see this decision as a key test for Government, one that will determine whether its aspiration to be the ‘greenest government ever’ is being overridden by a new drive to spend public money on infrastructure, no matter how damaging or ineffective it will be. Not only would approving it shred the Government’s environmental credentials, it would also be a poor use of public money and will not provide the sustainable regeneration Hastings needs.”

The Bexhill-Hastings Link Road’s proposed route is through the middle of the Combe Haven Valley, an area vital for nature and recreation, passing within metres of a Site of Special Scientific Interest and several Sites of Nature Conservation. The area is also important historically as it includes the possible landing site for the Norman invasion in 1066 and could contain important archeological remains.

The road is the final major road scheme awaiting a funding decision from the Department for Transport. The funding decision was postponed in December 2011 when Ministers ordered East Sussex County Council to examine alternative road and public transport options for new housing and businesses that would be less environmentally damaging, something campaigners argue has never been properly completed. Campaigners are concerned that Treasury sources are pushing for the scheme to be approved so that it can be announced in the Budget on 21 March.

ENDS

The link to the letter to  Secretary of State Justine Greening is below:

http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/files/letter-on-BHLR.pdf

The meeting with the DfT followed this flurry of media activity – here’s a report:

 A quick update on Thursday’s meeting with the Department for Transport.

We had with us our four experts – Judy Clark, Alan Wenban-Smith, Keith Buchan and Mark Sullivan giving presentations on issues of biodiversity/landscape, economic credentials, transport and sustainability, and planning.

The four DfT staff present listened carefully to the presentations and asked questions throughout the 90 minute meeting which was efficiently chaired by Robert S Fox of DfT, and very well steered by our chairman, Nick Bingham. It was open and cordial throughout and gave every opportunity for all of our team – including Nick, Gillian and Derrick – to make useful contributions to the discussions.

We are very confident that a great deal of light was shed on matters which otherwise might have been passed by, and that the case presented by the promoters is not only being legitimately challenged by the Hastings Alliance, but that there are very powerful arguments in every area covered by our presentations that support and justify such a challenge. The meeting was evidently valued by the DfT team.

We believe that we did our best, and that thanks to the work put in by our presenters, our best was pretty good!

One telling post meeting assessment from an attendee: ‘…it got across the key points: huge environmental damage, lack of robust justification (ludicrous economic arguments, modelling changes all the time), stubborn refusal to take obvious and available alternatives seriously’.

The DfT told us that they were in constant dialogue with ministers but that they couldn’t anticipate a ‘decision date’. We deduce that there is a chance that the budget statement on Wednesday 21st could include such a decision, but that the decision in any case is likely to be very soon.

Photos of the team outside DfT offices, and the Meridian presenter in action at Laura and Ray Boggis’s Bynes Farm overlooking the valley are featured below:

EVIDENCE GATHERING FOR OUR CASE

Our joint meeting with the Department for Transport (DfT), East Sussex County Council and others – including Network Rail and the Highways Agency – took place on the 21^st February.

It was a meeting where supporters of BHLR set out their stall, and where those of us with different ideas of the best ways of bringing benefits to the towns tabled alternative ideas. The meeting was expertly chaired by the DfT who fielded relevant experts.

Since then all parties have been sifting through past published material and studies around meeting the needs of Bexhill and Hastings, and sharing these with the Department for Transport.

The next stage for us is to refine the measures which make up our alternative strategy to the BHLR and to meet with the DfT on the 15^th March to present these for discussion.

PROFESSIONAL HELP AND FUNDS

There will be seven of us at the meeting: Chairman Nick Bingham, Gillian Bargery and Derrick Coffee. Our expert professionals will include Dr Judy Clark – a long standing Hastings Alliance member, Keith Buchan, transport planner: Professor Alan Wenban –Smith, urban and regional planning consultant; and Mark Sullivan, planning consultant. The last three have much experience of the BHLR scheme and a good knowledge of the area and we have commissioned them in the past. Our recent fund raising drive has allowed us to engage them again and we look forward confidently to our meeting. In just seven weeks, we have raised £1,700 pounds from our members  and well wishers in large and small amounts, and a grant of £2,000 from Lush cosmetics ‘Charity Pot’ fund for local environmental campaigns. We thank all donors for their generosity and support over many years.

We have worked very hard in the last few weeks to research and develop our ideas on alternatives – and they are looking increasingly viable. Although they haven’t been welcomed by the supporters of BHLR, we think that ministers will be looking for value for money through adopting a well timed package of schemes that are not, as we believe is the case with BHLR, going to risk millions of pounds worth of public funds.

Aside from our efforts or those of others, we note the good news that measures other than transport related ones can boost communities in the shape of the fast broadband that is on schedule to arrive in Bexhill, Hastings and St Leonards this Spring with the help of £10.6m from government.

More soon.

Never in the Top 20 transport schemes in England, the BHLR appears to have dropped out of the charts altogether. On December 14th 2011, Secretary of State for Transport Justine Greening gave the go ahead for 41 transport schemes in England out of 45 for which funding was being sought. (see previous post, 15th December). Clearly not a hit with the minister, the BHLR was not one of them. Following statements by East Sussex politicians to the effect that the funding approval was ‘in the bag’, this must have come as quite a shock.

There now follows an ‘evidence gathering process’, seeking and examining from already published studies the most appropriate measures for the regeneration of Bexhill and Hastings. This process will be completed by 31st March. The Department of Transport (DfT), East Sussex County Council and ‘stakeholders’ – both for and against the BHLR – will meet in mid-February. Positions on the most appropriate transport futures for Bexhill and Hastings will then be shared and discussed. Following this there will be an opportunity for us to further marshall our evidence and then to meet with the DfT to present a summary of our case. BHLR supporters will have the same opportunities. The Secretary of State will consider the evidence and ‘move swiftly’ to a decision soon after.

Marshalling evidence and preparing a succinct summary for Ministers will require expert guidance and of course, this will need funding: funds are currently low. We are therefore appealing for donations, large or small, to secure the best guidance possible for what is almost certainly the final chapter in our campaign to remove for good the threat of the BHLR, and to make Bexhill and Hastings a showcase for sustainable transport and low carbon development. If you’d like to make a donation, cheques made out to ‘Hastings Alliance’ may  be sent to our Treasurer at the following address:

Derek Hodgkinson, 34, Fern Road, St Leonards – on – sea, East Sussex. TN38 OVH.

As a reminder of the beauty of Combe Haven in all seasons, including the pantomime one, here are a couple of photos taken by member Bill Coney of Sidley on January the 2nd this year. The floodplain one would be bisected by the BHLR. ‘Oh no it won’t!’

Secretary of State for Transport Justine Greening announced on Wednesday, 14th December, that the decision on the BHLR would be deferred until March. She had this to say in respect of the scheme:

“We recognise the critically important role that transport improvements could play in the regeneration of the Bexhill-Hastings area and the economic case underpinning the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road, though we are also aware of concerns regarding the proposed scheme, including its environmental impact.

Before we take a final decision on the scheme we want to be sure that it offers the best approach for regenerating the area and also to consider other transport options to achieve this, including local trunk roads such as the A21, A259 and local rail. We also want to consider whether further environmental mitigation measures could be deployed to address the impacts of the proposed Bexhill-Hastings scheme.

Over the next three months the Department will work alongside the scheme’s promoters and other local and regional partners to gather further evidence on the optimal solution for the area. We would intend to make a decision swiftly thereafter.”

For us this deferment was a huge relief and on its own, appears to justify our hard and constructive campaigning work over the last decade and a half.

We look forward to the dialogue in the months ahead and have already begun to explore the whole range of measures that we believe could contribute to the ‘optimal  solution’ for the area.

We are certain that the promoters’ long term singular focus on the BHLR has obscured the real potential for the showcase sustainable transport package that Bexhill and Hastings deserve. There are exciting opportunities to give the two towns an enviable integrated transport system equal to, or better than the best in the UK, and we look forward to playing a part in identifying these. We sincerely hope that the historic ‘BHLR mantra’ is a thing of the past, where it belongs.