Homes or Community?
Council and MP Challenge Developers of Ashdown House
HUGH SULLIVAN
The housing estate recently built on the site of Ashdown House, the former Department of Work & Pensions office block off Harrow Lane, was scheduled to provide 151 new homes, a fresh Aldi supermarket – plus a ground-floor community centre and children’s playground.
Children’s playground?
The developers, Chartway Partnerships Group, applied in February to modify their planning permission by substituting two more two-bedroom flats for this centre, claiming that there was no genuine demand for it. They showed that they had approached Hastings Voluntary Action chief Steve Mainwaring, who had been unable to identify any local community group that was interested in managing the space.
It seems, however, that Chartway didn’t search widely enough. At the beginning of this month, Homes Manager at Hastings Borough Council, Susan Hanson, wrote to inform them that registered housing provider Orbit is not just interested but “enthusiastic”. Orbit are currently engaged in delivering their own housing development (another 140 homes) on the former Harrow Lane playing fields immediately opposite. They say they want to “explore collaborative opportunities with [the council] and Chartway to transform Ashdown House into a vibrant and inclusive community hub”, and they point to previous experience in managing similar community-led hubs in several locations elsewhere.
AFFORDABLE RENTS
Hyde Housing, who are responsible alongside Chartway for delivery of the 59 homes at Ashdown House that have been offered for affordable rent, also seem to be on board. According to Orbit, they have indicated their own support for their tenants being able to use the community centre as per the original plan.
On this basis, Ms Hanson has told Chartway that the council would expect them to enter into discussions with Orbit to agree a lease for the community space. She has also informed them that funding has been ring-fenced within the council budget to support successful delivery of the hub. In the meantime, the proposed application for change of use to allow the building of further flats will be objected to.
But Chartway have refused to cave in. They maintain that they will only be willing to relinquish the space for the community centre if their freehold interest in it is bought out. Since (they say) neither the council nor Orbit is willing to proceed on this basis, no deal can be done, and they are left with no option but to seek the change of use.
They have written back to Paul Howson, the council’s Development Manager, arguing that “there are no overriding planning grounds to resist this application,” while two additional affordable rented homes “will provide a material and demonstrable benefit to affordable housing in the locality at a time of an overall national and local housing crisis.”
LACK OF PLAYGROUND
Hastings & Rye MP Helena Dollimore weighed in on the issue in a speech in the House of Commons last week. The context was an adjournment debate on the topic of unadopted housing estates, where developers and/or local authorities fail to ensure that roads and other communal amenities serving new-build estates are taken into the public realm. Ms Dollimore drew attention to the fact that, at Ashdown House, Chartway had promised both a community centre and a playground but delivered neither. “Eight-year-old Gia” had reported this failure to her at a recent constituency drop-in session, producing a notebook (adorned with a cat on the front) in which signatures of local residents had been collected to urge the developers to “live up to their commitments”.
Whether Chartway can avoid this by succeeding with their application for change of use will presumably be decided in a forthcoming meeting of the council’s planning committee. If they fail, they may appeal.
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