Millennium Communities

The Millennium Communities site covers the old Broomgrove Power Station, the railway goods yards down to Parker Road and Mount Pleasant Road up to the old St. Helen's Hospital site on Frederick Road.  It was being redeveloped by Seaspace, the local regeneration agency that has now been replaced by ESEID (East Sussex Energy & Infrastructure Development), to provide a new 'village centre' around Ore Station, shops and business premises and around 450 new homes, with a 'greenspace' area to be retained from the undeveloped, green parts of the site. But the project was seriously delayed - originally, the first homes were scheduled to be handed over to their new owners in 2003, but complications with land assembly put paid to that.  Since then, the economic downturn hasn't helped. And now the Millennium Communities project is officially dead.  It was ended by the current government, which means there will be no further funding available.

However, the first phase of the project has now been built.  Bellway Homes are constructing 51 homes, a small supermarket and office space around Ore station.  But the future of the rest of the area, including the site with the 'road to nowhere' on Frederick Road, is in doubt, with no further funding available.  It may be that when phase 1 is complete, the rest is more attractive to developers without subsidy.  Whatever happens, we will be doing whatever we can to try to find solutions, and to make sure the land is properly maintained.

Broomgrove Allotments Development Site

Finally, this problem seems to be close to resolution.  The developers and Investec bank have recognised that it can't be fully developed cost effectively, in the current market.  They have undertaken to bring Broomgrove Road up to a fully adoptable standard (which means it will then automatically become a public highway maintained by the county council, and cleaned by the borough council), finish building the block of flats on Broomgrove Road and sell them to Orbit housing association, and reinstate the footpath from Mount Pleasant to Broomgrove Road.  The rest of the site is being landscaped as open space.

Council enforcement officers have visited, and after initial good progress, things seem to have gone quiet, with the original developers involved again.  This is disappointing, and has meant that the original deadline for completing all work in October has passed with the road, footpath and landscaping unfinished.  The position remains that the developers cannot sell the flats to anyone until the planning conditions have been fulfilled.  An application has now been received by the council to modify the original planning application (to allow the works as outlined above to take place), so hopefully they'll now get on with it.

Everyone had told the developers of this site that it wouldn't work, it was too difficult and expensive a site to build on.  The only way they could have done it was by ignoring the planning conditions - and we didn't let them do that!

Upper Ore Valley

The Upper Ore Valley (know locally as 'the 'Oller') is an area of undeveloped wooded land extending from Frederick Road up to Victoria Avenue, between Church Street and Old London Road.  This wonderful, unspoilt area of land is (in part) earmarked for housing development, but many local people (and your Tressell councillors) believe it should be retained as open space, and opened up for public access.  A local organisation called Ore Valley Action is setting up a Community Land Trust to take over stewardship of unregistered in the valley, and hopefully take over other land by public agencies and others, gradually opening it up for public access.

The Ore Community Land Trust has been set up to oversee the work in the valley, and management of the unregistered land.  Prince's Trust volunteers have been helping to clear the valley, and various conservation days are being organised.  Work on clearing and tidying the valley has begun again, with volunteers working most Saturday mornings.

If you'd like to join or would like more information, see the website at:

www.orecommunitylandtrust.org.uk

The trust can be contacted at:

ore.clt@hotmail.com

Refuse collection

Most of Tressell Ward gets a 'twin bin' collection, with two wheelie bins, one for general waste and one for recylables, collected on alternate weeks.  However, the West Hill part of the ward (south of Mount Pleasant Road)  still has the old, weekly black bag collection.  This doesn't work well, because the bags are ripped open by foxes, badgers and gulls, and because recycling rates are low in the 'black bag' areas. 

However, a consultation on communal bins in the area showed this idea to be very unpopular, a view that has been reinforced by our recent door knocking.  So what could be a better solution?  Rigid, collapsible 'binvelopes' are a possibility, or even simply stronger, gull-proof sacks.  It may also be possible to allow some households in a street to have wheelie bins if they want them, and if they have the space to store them.  There's also now a trial of seagull-proof sacks taking place in Emmanuel Road.

Elsewhere in the ward, where wheelie bins have been introduced, some residents have found this difficult because they have steep steps leading up or down to their property.  Should we be looking at alternative solutions here too?

We'd like to know your views on this.  Let us know by e-mail what you think, at councillors@tressell.org.uk .  And let us know, too, if you'd like to be part of a small working group to discuss the possibilities.