Rother District Council will shortly have to decide whether to grant planning permission for a controversial nursing care home in Rye Foreign.
I don’t envy the council’s planning team. The 60-bedroom, three-level home is planned for a 0.72ha greenfields site adjoining the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital precinct: however, the problem is that the site, on an escarpment slope above Rye, also forms part of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), a protected area under law.
The parcel of land also comprises part of RY24 — a “red site” rejected in RDC’s own Strategic Housing Land Availability Assessment review. “Development here would be to the detriment to the character of the AONB. Not suitable,” the review declared. RDC recently confirmed to me that the site lies outside the Development Boundary as defined in the 2006 Local Plan.
Make no mistake. With a development price rumoured to be around £8 million, this nursing home would prove a major development for Rye and it would almost certainly count as the largest single building project in town. It appears that 75% of the 60 care home residents will be privately funded and could be charged around £1,200 a week, while the remainder will be “community beds” reserved for local people.
The project’s main developers are the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital (the Charity) and care home operator Greensleeves. It’s understood that there’s also solid support from the East Sussex County Council, East Sussex Healthcare Trust and Clinical Commissioners — all of whom argue that there’s an urgent need for nursing care homes in this corner of the county.
I believe they are right when they say we desperately need nursing homes for our frail and elderly people, many of who suffer from dementia and other health problems. However, I feel they are absolutely wrong in claiming the current site to be the only suitable one in the area. Local people have already pointed to the near-vacant former Hill House Hospital — only 100 metres from the site — as having good potential to be redesigned as a nursing home, and there are a number of other prospects in or close to Rye.
Having personally spoken to the main project proponent, it’s my belief that the choice of location is largely based on the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital (the Charity's) avowed desire to gather the full range of health care provision in a single precinct. While I accept the good intentions of the charity and Greensleeves, I question the need for this nursing home to be build on environmentally protected AONB land, outside the local development boundary.
Uniting all the health care in one area is only a reasonable ambition if one’s local GPs are behind the plan. But feedback from the Rye Medical Centre suggests its doctors have serious reservations about the care home project. They say that not only will they be attending to the Memorial Hospital’s 19 patients, but that a further 60 very frail people on their books would mean they would be struggling to provide care. What would be the impact on other patients?
This is a very complex, nuanced issue, with no easy choices. Local people will know that the Rye, Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital (the Charity) has already developed a large 55-unit “extra care” retirement facility, St Bartholomew's Court, on its precinct, and it has ambitious plans for a Day Care centre on the old ambulance station site on the A268 road. I support the Day Care centre but I’ve always been less impressed with the need for a retirement home in this location. The Rye Winchelsea and District Memorial Hospital (the Charity) charges the St Bartholomew's Court operator, Sanctuary Housing, a ground rent, and will reportedly levy a similar charge to Greensleeves for the nursing home.
If you’d like to comment on the nursing home planning application, you can do so until December 13, by accessing the Rother District Council website and searching for application RR/2017/2097/P.
Photo: Rye News library
Photo: Rye News library
