Over 450 people object to Link Road to the Link Road

May 31, 2013 by combehavendefenders

The ‘Gateway’ road being developed by Seachange Sussex (see below) is proving to be less popular than CEO John Shaw had hoped.

Over 450 objections to the road were received by Rother District Council by the closing date of May 31.  At stalls in Sidley and Bexhill, people queued up to add their objections.  Many were shocked to hear about the proposal for the road, and the associated developement on greenfield land (which will be the subject of a future planning application, if the road is approved).

You can see a list of objections here – go to ‘view documents’ (the online comments are at the end of the list of documents).

What is the gateway road?

On 30 April 2013 ‘Seachange Sussex’ submitted a planning application for a so-called “Gateway Road” joining the £100m still-to-be-built Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) to Wrestwood Road – a key step in developers’ long-term plans to build a 50,000 square meter  “business park” north east of Bexhill and a massive housing complex north west of Pebsham:

The land on which the road would be built – and which would be built upon in the next phase of development – is all owned by Trinity College Cambridge.  How much they will be paid for the land has not been revealed.  In a recent meeting with opponents of the Link Road, Seachange CEO John Shaw refused to say how much the road would cost, or where the money would come from.  He did not rule out accepting public funds.

Like the Link Road itself the “Gateway Road” will lead to further loss of greenfield land and damage to wildlife habitat, increased carbon emissions, loss of amenity areas and large-scale changes to the character of the area.

Moreover, the “business park” will not solve the area’s economic problems. Indeed, the whole Link Road project – of which the business park is just one part – is expected to generate barely 500 local jobs.*

You can find more background about the “Gateway Road” (from its promoters’ perspective) here.