Land clearance at Barley Lane fails to prompt permission to build
Wildlife supporters were rejoicing last week when owners of a two-acre plot of land between Barley Lane and Boyne Road above Clive Vale were refused Permission in Principle (PiP) to build on it. The area, designated as part of a local wildlife site since 1999, was cleared of all vegetation last November at the instigation of the owners Andrew Lawson and Michel Conn – or rather of their local agent Keith Hollidge, since they live in retirement in France.
The application for a PiP, introduced under the Housing and Planning Act 2016 as a form of outline permission, was aimed at establishing in principle that the site is suitable to build on. The planning department of Hastings Borough Council (HBC) has now recommended otherwise.
(Left) The clearance begins… (Right) The clearance completed
CREDIT: Richard Price
It could be argued that all land is capable of being built upon, but some is more developable than others. This area was previously allocated for housing. But a catastrophic landslide occurred in 1984, the last and only time an attempt to build on the site was made. Residents whose properties backed onto the site in Boyne Road were told to prepare to evacuate their houses. East Sussex County Council had to spend in the region of £300,000 in reinforcing the road and building a retaining wall. Following the landslide HBC halted the developers’ work. The latter went bust, after which the owners were able to purchase the land. They may have calculated that one day people would have forgotten this history.
Wildlife corridor
Environmentalists, however, realised that the area is a wildlife corridor that is important to the biodiversity of Clive Vale. A look via the map on Google Earth shows clearly why. The dense, inaccessible shrub and woodland forms an entrance that enables wildlife to travel to and from the Country Park into the wooded valley between Boyne Road and Harold Road and two fishing lakes to the north of the valley of the Bourne stream. The council was persuaded to remove the site’s housing allocation and to designate it as a Local Wildlife Site.
On the other hand, Mr Hollidge seems to have calculated that, if the local wildlife could be removed, the housing allocation might be restored. He employed a consultancy which cleared the trees and all other vegetation. He then commissioned a preliminary ecological survey which, unsurprisingly, described the habitat as felled trees.
If he had quietly gone about the application rather than clearing the trees and shrubs, local residents might not have noticed, but objection letters came thick and fast into the council’s website. Ninety-six objections and one letter of support were sent to planning. Sussex Wildlife Trust, the Council for Protection of Rural England and the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF) were among the objectors.
Repeating the clearance
What next? It is open to the owners to appeal the PiP decision or to submit a detailed application. According to Mr Hollidge, the owners have instructed him to keep the site cleared and to survey it each year. If clearance is regularly repeated, it will of course severely reduce the biodiversity not only of the area under attack but of the corridor generally.
So how could this strategy be combatted? Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) are one method, since it is woodland. TPOs can be used to protect specific trees, groups of trees or woodlands as a whole. Dr John Feltwell, chartered environmentalist and biologist currently employed by the ELF, claims that the trees are still alive despite the efforts to kill them, and that an order may be made by a local planning authority “in the interests of amenity”. The Woodland Trust confirms that a TPO is appropriate to protect any tree that has “nature conservation value”.
But HBC’s tree officer Chris Wilken has just refused an application made by Clive Vale Residents Association and the ELF on the ground that the trees recently removed were “unexceptional in terms of their landscape value… The now cleared trees had been planted randomly across the site. This was a collection of low amenity trees rather than established woodland”.
So does the council want to protect their borough’s local wildlife – or not?
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Chris Wilken states that all the trees are “low amenity” – it’s unclear what he means by this. The wildlife that used these trees in a Local Wildlife Site certainly found them to have amenity. He says the trees were “planted randomly across the site” – this comment is ludicrous – the trees are all self seeded trees and would therefore be randomly distributed.
In my experience the HBC Tree Officer rarely protects trees and is always reluctant to impose Tree Preservation Orders (TPO). He has a long track record of always consenting to developer’s requests to remove trees.
He failed to recognise that around 50 trees were removed at Rocklands and refused to meet with SEG to discuss evidence. He has resisted replanting at Rocklands to improve screening. Following the appeal the Planning Inspector imposed a condition to plant screening trees. Rocklands proposed a planting schedule that initially included no trees on the East Hill side – the Tree Officer accepted this. Finally a planting schedule involving 5 miniscule oaks (still unplanted) was agreed – again the Tree Officer accepted the completely inadequate scheme.
He initially refused to impose a TPO on the surviving trees at Rocklands as the trees had low amenity. Following political pressure from Cllr Hodges he finally imposed a TPO on the grounds of landscape amenity. However the TPO has proven to be worthless as Rocklands continue to carry out works on them and Planning fail to enforce.
In 2016 he refused to impose a TPO on trees bordering the reservoir at Shearbarn claiming that the trees were under no immediate threat. I March 2020 some 110 trees were lopped to near ground level dramatically reducing screening.
He refused to impose a TPO on trees on the parcel of land between Barley Lane and Rocklands Lane again stating that they were under no threat. A couple of years later trees were removed in an attempt to get planning permission. Most trees on the site remain unprotected.
A planning application that attempted to remove some 75 TPO protected trees at Beauport Park went unopposed by the Tree Officer. Public objections refused the application and reduced the number of trees to be removed to 30 trees.