Central government looking to take Eastbourne’s voice away on planning

I serve as chair of Eastbourne Borough Council’s planning committee. And what a privilege it is, with our Victorian architecture, unique street scenes and a good balance of green and developed areas.

Our local and experienced planning committee works cross-party to welcome innovative and high-quality developments to our town, to work towards government housing targets, and to protect our heritage and beautiful buildings. Localism is what makes this happen.

But recently, we have seen central government changing the rules to give more weight to developers at the expense of local people. Government has forced through the demolition of the Victorian Kempston Villas and the overdevelopment of Meads Brow, against the will of the planning committee, officers and local residents.

New proposals in a government White Paper are going to challenge the powerful tradition of localism even further, forcing more building works in areas that local residents deem undevelopable. They include:

• Reducing or remove the rights of local residents to object to applications near them;

• Granting automatic rights for developers to build on land identified by central government as ‘for growth’, rather than by local residents;

• Removing section 106 payments to cover the cost of enhancing local infrastructure to support developments and create affordable housing (and replacing them with a national levy that goes to central government.)

The list goes on.

Why have I taken this unusual step of writing to the paper? Because it is important that the people of Eastbourne realise that central government is looking to take planning control away from local communities and risk unsustainable developments in our town.

If the government wants to interfere, they must bring in legislation forcing developers to build out their planning permissions first (we have more than 60 sets of planning permission ready for development in our town), before even considering coming for our precious green sites.

These are my personal views as a resident of Eastbourne.