Eastbourne councillor and residents voice concerns around Aldi plans

Aldi is set to submit planning application to build a store just off Pacific Drive any day now (November 3). The company held a public consultation which attracted a lot of attention from residents. Documents from the consultation said: “Aldi, McCarthy Stone, and LNT Care Developments are pleased to present their emerging proposals for a comprehensive regeneration of land at Pacific Drive, Sovereign Harbour, Eastbourne.”

The three partners hope to create an Aldi store, 57 specialist McCarthy Stone Retirement Living apartments, and a 66-bed care home from LNT Care Developments. Consultation documents say: “Despite the long-standing vision and the outline permission, and best endeavours to find occupiers, the site remains underdeveloped.”

The virtual consultation was held September 8-20 with a drop-in session on September 8 at the Sovereign Harbour Yacht Club. Draft plans were on display to give residents the chance to offer their feedback.

Conservative Councillor Kshama Shore attended the consultation and said around 500 other people attended in-person too. She said more than 300 people wrote in to share their views and 75 per cent of them weren’t happy with the plans they saw with the main issue being around access.

She has written to Eastbourne Borough Council’s head of planning to highlight the key objection: “Pacific Drive is already the only access for the entire North Harbour, over 2,000 homes and their occupants, not to mention emergency vehicles (including RNLI crews responding to callouts) who need to use it. It is just not safe to expect the narrow road to cope with the additional traffic of a supermarket including deliveries from articulated lorries. Access to something on this scale and generating so many traffic movements simply has to be from Pevensey Bay Road and not via Pacific Drive.”

Cllr Shore has stressed to planners that there is room either to construct a suitable access road from the existing roundabout on the A259, or directly from the A259 itself. She said: “I am genuinely concerned, not only about severe traffic congestion on Pacific Drive, but also about the real possibility of loss of life if Aldi’s current access plans go ahead. Aldi and their planning advisors should do the right thing despite the cost, for the benefit of the community they purport to serve – and I appeal to them and our planners to see reason.”

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