Housing association AmicusHorizon has reluctantly withdrawn its plans to build new homes and a new community centre at Tilling Green.
The housing provider will not be submitting a further planning application and confirms it will no longer be proceeding with its proposal to build on this site.
It had planned to create an attractive cul-de-sac style development featuring 32 homes for rent and shared ownership, as well as a state of the art community centre. However, the costs of delivering this scheme have dramatically risen, meaning it was no longer financially viable to deliver the project.
AmicusHorizon had been working with Rye Partnership, who currently run the existing community centre, to deliver the plans and East Sussex County Council who are the current land owners.
East Sussex County Council are now considering the future use of the site and will be working with Rother District Council and Rye Partnership on the development of plans and next steps.
There had been local concern about the risk of flooding on site. To mitigate this risk, AmicusHorizon was forced to raise the height of the ground floor of the proposed units after receiving new guidance from the Environment Agency. This added substantial extra cost to the development and led to an increase in roof height not in keeping with the area.
A lack of additional grant funding to cover the cost of the centre and secure the land left AmicusHorizon with little option but to completely withdraw.
Neill Tickle, Development Director (Counties) at AmicusHorizon, said: “We’re extremely disappointed we had to make this decision, but delivering the high quality scheme we planned just didn’t make economic sense. We tried our very best to find a solution. We desperately wanted to deliver a scheme the local community would be proud of and which fitted into the existing environment. But it was simply not viable to continue when you compare the considerable extra build cost today to the cost estimated two years ago. We have informed East Sussex County Council (ESCC) and Rye Partnership of our decision. We remain committed to working with them in the future to deliver excellent housing for local people.”
Photo: Rye News library
