12 November 2009 Hastings Observer
By Richard Morris
Campaigners lobbying against a planned 163 new homes on the site of the former Hastings College have made a series of online protest films.
The pressure group, Save The Archery Ground, is determined to stop the development and recently held a public meeting attended by hundreds of concerned locals.
Now, for all those locals who could not make the meeting, the group has put a film of the session online.
The film, made by local resident Sam Robertson, is available on www.youtube.com or by following links on the group's own website, www.savethearcheryground.org.
Speakers at the event included Conservative parliamentary hopeful Amber Rudd, her LibDem counterpart Nick Perry and local Labour leader Jeremy Birch.
Anyone who wants to join in the fight against the developmen - which campaigners claim is shoehorning homes into a conservation area - should make contact via the aforementioned website.
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Published Date: 21 October 2009
By Nick Perry
Parliamentary campaigner, Hastings & Rye Liberal Democrats
I have written a number of times in this column that it's important to say when you agree with a political opponent.
So I am glad to be able to report that I agreed with every word my Conservative counterpart wrote about STAG – 'Save the Archery Ground' – this week, and about the public meeting held at the Masonic Hall on Sunday.
It was a fantastic effort by STAG's committee to get over 250 people into the hall, and the campaign they are waging is very well organised, and of enormous importance to our constituency.
The national heritage dimension of getting the right sort of redevelopment for the Archery Ground cannot be emphasised enough.
But STAG is not the only group of activist, dare I say militant, local people who are mobilising at the moment.
There were literally thousands of people marching to Save Hastings Pier last Saturday.
The Hastings & St Leonards Against Academies group is trying to put the other side of the Academies story – so that parents, teachers and young people can make an informed contribution to the consultation that has been undertaken recently. They were in action at the Hastings Old Town Residents' Association on Tuesday evening.
What have these campaigns got in common?
Well (and some may say that I am partisan in these matters) if you look closely, is there not a kind of partnership going on – a symbiosis between Labour and the Conservatives at different levels of government – that local people are coming together to oppose?
Take the Archery Ground. STAG is currently trying to persuade Conservative-run Hastings Borough Council that the planning application by the contractor Gladedale is not in the long-term heritage or environmental interests of Burton St Leonards.
As I understand it, Gladedale, a company which has very shaky financial foundations, is already a party to other regeneration projects in Hastings; projects which have the heavy involvement of the South East England Development Agency and which have been funded (often directly) by the Labour Government.
As for the planned Academies for Hastings: the Conservative-run County Council is trying to foist this model of school improvement on the local community at the behest of a Labour Government dead-set on getting as many academies in place as possible, whatever the local community thinks.
And then there is the Pier. How does this fit the theory?
Well, it doesn't really. But there always needs to be an exception to prove a rule...
I firmly believe that the problems these local groups are highlighting will not be helped one jot by electing my Conservative counterpart at the General Election.
This is, incidentally, someone who won't answer questions on key aspects of Conservative policy or the Conservative Party itself; someone who has not been willing to go on the record about her core political beliefs.
I believe that our constituency would benefit from having a strong, radical, independent-minded MP who will examine these and future issues, and speak up for us at Westminster.
A Liberal Democrat MP will be a good choice for the people of Hastings & Rye.
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Published Date: 20 October 2009
By Amber Rudd
Conservative Parliamentary spokesman for Hastings and Rye
There is trouble brewing in St Leonard's.
The residents around the old Hastings College site in Archery Road, are mustering support, raising money and getting ready to kick up an almighty stink. What is going on?
In the middle of St Leonard's is Hastings College – up a winding road behind the Royal Victoria Hotel. When you admire the surrounding architecture it seems staggering that such a building was allowed to be built in the middle of such an important area. It is now classified as a conservation area, and the old Hastings College site is to be re-developed.
At a meeting of residents to consider the planning proposals currently being put forward, on Sunday afternoon one of the speakers referred to this development as "an opportunity to correct mistakes of before." How right she was. This site could now be used to build residential accommodation wholly in keeping with the remarkable architecture in the surround area. This is what the residents want. This is what they are rightly fighting for.
The current proposal however is at best bland, at worst wholly inappropriate. The original plans of 2006 proposed 125 units per hectare. The current proposals have upped that density to 74 per hectare. This is likely to be 500 new residents - a huge addition to the current community. This number of new homes can't be achieved while adhering to the unique character of the area.
This must be a sensitive development, in keeping with the area and manageable in density. The meeting was packed, heated and very informative. The committee of STAG (Save the Archery Ground) put together an excellent presentation of the history of the site, the proposals in hand, and the possible routes for objection. They have a website, that pulls no punches on what could happen if the current proposal goes through, www.savethearcheryground.org.
I will be supporting them and helping to make sure that we get a new plan that is acceptable to the residents. This is an opportunity for something new and good for the area. As the presenter said, "to correct the mistakes of before'". Let's not make our own, a generation later.
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Hastings Online Times- October 2009
The Archery Ground in Burtons' St Leonards was for 130 years a public open space, nationally famous and visited by royalty in Victorian times. It formed an integral part of the Burtons' St Leonards new town development of the early 19th century, an exemplary plan which balanced architectural excellence with beautifully managed open spaces.
In the 1960s the Archery Ground was commandeered for Hastings College, which built a hideous tower block but left much of the wild tree-lined ground behind it unspoiled.
Now the huge but financially ailing developers Gladedale Homes want to build 7 blocks of flats on it. Most of the trees will go. If they get their way, a total of 163 dwellings and car parking will be shoehorned into this beauty spot which forms an integral part of the ambience of historic St Leonards.
A conservation area of both local and national significance will have been wiped out, for no better purpose than to maximise the profits of a company that has indirectly been bailed out to the tune of £500 million by HBOS, which in turn has, it's just been revealed, secretly been shored up by the Treasury to the tune of £65 billion.
These may not strictly be planning issues, but it's worth noting that the money Gladedale paid for the College site has been re-directed into the Station Plaza and Ore Valley development.
The very cheap price they paid for the site was a reflection of the many constraints outlined by Council officers which would have kept the density at about half the present application. (It has also been suggested that the purchase is not yet complete, and that as the density rises, so will the price — and with it, more money for Station Plaza.)
What are planning issues (apart from over-density, inappropriate materials and layout that negate the landscape's contours, loss of open space, impact of traffic, noise and collateral damage to the surrounding area) are the application's many inaccuracies, including a whole missing building!
Council officers are now rumoured to be set to support the application on Dec.9. Are they backtracking on the standards they set out at the start, and if so, just what grubby deals have been done?
The STAG campaign point out that this is a historic opportunity to undo the damage to the site done in the 1960s and return to the standards of excellence that marked the original Burton development. It's been suggested that a national architectural competition, based on a widely agreed planning brief, could come up with a scheme worthy of the site.
Along with the Jerwood Gallery, this could also do wonders for Hastings' reputation, and there would surely be no shortage of people wanting to move in.
Do look up STAG's excellent and thoroughly researched site at www.savethearcherground.org and use this link to support the petition http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stag/
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Hastings Observer 11 September 2009
Council in dock over housing plan for former college
Angry residents living near the soon-to-be vacated Hastings College campus in Archery Road have hit out at plans to shoehorn 163 new homes on to the site. Many people whose homes neighbour Hastings College of Arts and Technology have condemned the scale of the designs apparently destined for the heart of the historic Burton St Leonards area. And they have expressed concerns about the financial clout of one of the two firms which plan to develop the site. The Hastings Observer learned this week that Gladedale Homes – which is also working on the new town centre college site – is servicing a £1billion debt. The firm announced a deal with Lloyds Banking Group to help bail it out of financial insecurity. However, residents are now asking questions of the council. One such home-owner, Martin Bloomfield, of The Mount, asked: “What criteria did they use in selecting this debt-ridden partner in desperate need of high density, high profit developments to bankroll its debts? One poor decision follows another. Now we have the council and Gladedale trying to squeeze a mini city onto the Archery Road site in the middle of a conservation area without sufficient public consultation. These people couldn’t build a beach hut without negative consequences on the environment, our heritage and the local community.” There were also concerns raised about the level of public consultation, with many residents saying they felt the plans submitted to the local authority did not accurately reflect those shown to people at a consultation meeting. Local resident Nick Russell criticised the design itself. He said: “Forty-five years ago Burton’s Highlands House, Rosemount, pavilion and an exquisite sculptured garden formed from the disused quarry were bulldozed to make way for Hastings College – an act of architectural vandalism. The development of the Archery Road site is a one in a lifetime opportunity to repair the planning blunders of the past and to bring fame and credit to Hastings by creating a housing development which embraces the highest standards of architectural design and that pays tribute to the genius of the Burtons. Gladedale’s templated design and huge density concept is little more than a ‘pile them high sell then cheap’ development.” Council spokesman Kevin Boorman denied consultation had been flawed, saying: “There has been public consultation, including a meeting back in May where 59 responses were gathered – all of which are reflected in the planning statement. The council also wrote to all local residents on September 4 as well as putting up notices and advertising the planning notice in the Hastings Observer.” He added that the finances of Gladedale Homes was not a planning consideration and that residents still had until September 25 to register their support or objections. At the time of going to press there had been no comment from Gladedale.
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