One wonders about the meaning of the word planning

I am writing to congratulate you on last week’s edition containing it’s excellent examples of the lack of ‘joined up thinking’.

On one page there is the story of the sale of Harrow Lane playing fields, despite a covenant of being gifted for recreational purposes only. Though of course that, as with the central cricket ground, we know that covenants are meaningless to Hastings Borough Council.

Yet, a few pages on, there is the story of Boris Johnson speaking against the building on green fields and jamming homes in the South East.

Another story is of the closure of Junction Road once the Queensway Road is complete. Councillor Peter Pragnell, in favour of the traffic regulation order (TPO), says “The cause of most of the traffic misery in that part of town is Junction Road and in particular it is of traffic queuing to get in and out of the top and bottom of the road turning right”.

This cannot be denied, but surely the ’joined up thinking’ would take into account that the Gateway Road is intended to divert traffic from The Ridge, thereby alleviating this problem.

Adding to this, the originally planed roundabout is now to be replaced by a traffic light controlled junction only four hundred metres from the Sainsbury entrance traffic light junction, surely creating another bottleneck.

The failure to obtain the necessary land for this junction before starting construction of the road, has led to this alternative junction, but looking at ‘Google Earth’ it appears to show that without the re-location of the car showroom, but by taking just a corner of their land by the footpath at the end of Whitworth Road, and using the ‘island’ that was originally a slip road, there is space for quite a large roundabout.

But East Sussex County Council has agreed the TPO, and to consider alternatives once a decision has been made would, of course, be unthinkable. So yet another traffic scheme can be added to previous ‘improvements’.

The reduction from two lanes to one at Rock-a -Nore; a similar exercise at the bottom of London Road, St Leonards, and by virtue of the bus lane in Bexhill Road, a lost lane at Harley Chute Road.

Add to this the building of the Link Road to relieve Bexhill Road, then build a supermarket - and plan for houses on Bultherhythe playing fields makes one wonder about the meaning of the word planning!

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