Tesco agents at town forum

Tesco agents are coming to the first meeting of the Uckfield Town Forum on Tuesday to talk about their ideas for a major redevelopment of the store on the town's Luxford Field.

The public meeting will be held at the Weald Hall in the Civic Centre at 7.30pm and will be chaired by Cllr Kathy Fordham with town residents and members of local organisations invited to attend.

At a town council meeting on Tuesday, councillors were still arguing over how the forum should be run but eventually compromised, agreeing to hold the inaugural meeting in public and decide how to proceed from there.

Cllr Fordham had said it was not her understanding that the forum was intended to be a series of public meetings.

She believed the intention was to give anyone interested in the future of the town the chance to join the forum which would take the form of an organised meeting. Cllr Fordham wanted to know in advance how many people would be attending the meeting and said that could be done by all those interested, including town residents, giving their names to the town clerk.

But Cllr Martha Whittle argued that the original intention was for far greater public participation. 'If we abandon that we are virtually abandoning the people of Uckfield by not giving them their chance to comment and mould what is going to happen in their town.'

Cllr Ian Smith said there needed to be a sense of order at the forum and he couldn't imagine a huge meeting getting anywhere. 'There would be a lot of hot air and no progress. We do need structure.'