Housing Developer Ignores Community
KENT BARKER
A developer applying for planning permission for a new housing estate at Holmhurst Gardens is under fire for failing to consult the local community.
Foreman Homes has submitted a planning application for 31 new houses to the south of The Ridge, near to where Southern Housing is currently constructing 208 homes. It has told Hastings Borough Council (HBC): “For many planning applications, engaging with the local community is a fundamental part of the planning process and allows local residents to have their say … However for this application we have made the conscious decision not to go down this route.”
The housing company argues that the development will help HBC towards its Government-imposed annual housing target, which was increased from 490 to 722 dwellings a year ago. HBC has described the government’s new figure as “completely out of reach given that the town is built with the sea on one side and protected landscapes to the west, north and east.”
The latest proposal at Holmhurst is for a mix of 42% affordable and 58% open market housing, with four first homes, seven rentals and two shared ownership units. Supporting their planning application Foreman Homes say “The increase in Hastings’ annual housing requirement coupled with the site being part of an emerging allocation demonstrates the site’s suitability to accommodate additional housing numbers.”
Local residents have expressed concern about the application. Stephen Wallis told the planning authority: “What a shame that Foreman Homes do not think it’s necessary to hold any community involvement processes! … The amount of development that has taken place in this area and upper Harrow Lane in the last couple of years has been huge. I will once again mention the lack of local services, i.e. doctors, dentists and school places, but no doubt this will be ignored, as it has been in previous applications.”
Local campaigner Bob Hart told HIP that the lack of community involvement “reveals the desire to get it done without public involvement. HBC is so eager, before they disappear, to have more homes they will do very little to delay them.”
Mr Hart has been in the forefront of exposing the destruction of a graveyard on land in the middle of the Southern Housing estate with the exhumation of the bodies of 46 nuns from the former Holmhurst St Mary Convent school. That was blamed on badgers, displaced by the construction work, digging up their bones. Mr Hart notes that the current application from Foreman Homes also fails to mention any plan for the welfare of badgers.
Other residents have suggested that the developer’s decision not to involve the community might have been influenced by the vociferous campaign to ‘save’ Sandrock Bends – another proposed housing development further east along The Ridge. Objectors have mounted a widespread online and media campaign opposing plans for 65 new homes there which will, they say, destroy a vital wildlife corridor between St Helen’s Woods and open countryside to the North. And there remains public anger at the removal of a community centre from plans for a 151-house development off Harrow Lane, as reported by HIP in March.
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