Dear Editor
Levelling Up
The government recently announced a grant of £19 million for improvements to the De La Warr Pavilion and for community facilities at Sidley, north of Bexhill.
This all seems far away from Rye, but I welcome the government’s announcement and congratulate Rother officers, councillors, the manager of the De La Warr and the Bexhill and Battle MP on a considerable achievement. The De La Warr Pavilion is listed grade one for its architectural merits. It is of international as well as national cultural importance and the cost of making it fit for the future is well beyond the resources of a single district council. Central government funding was essential and we can all be proud of the pavilion as a magnet for the tourism on which Rye and the whole district depends.
According to the Index of Social Deprivation, Rother has six areas among the most deprived 20% in England. Four of them are in Bexhill of which no fewer than three are in Sidley and one in central Bexhill. It is right to support Sidley with central government funds. Rye has one similarly deprived area, but the running costs of the Rye pool would have been beyond the scope of levelling up, even if the timing had been right. I look forward to Rother and Rye Town Council developing other ways to take that forward.
Both the De La Warr and Sidley projects are a good use of central government money to revitalise the district. I am less sure about calling the grant of £45 million to the Port of Dover “levelling up”. The grant includes a doubling of border control posts to reduce delays. This is not levelling up, but an attempt to mitigate the friction on EU trade which followed our withdrawal from the Single Market. There is now bureaucracy and delay which did not exist before - a deliberate consequence of government policy. Our trade agreement with the EU could be so much better, for while there are no tariffs there are other time-consuming and expensive checks which could have been avoided. The solution is to improve our trade agreement – which is bound to involve compromise – rather than to pour public money into extra facilities to deal with the problems created. Just think what could have been done with that £45 million.
Cllr Andrew Mier
Andrew Mier is Rother District Councillor (Lib Dem) for Southern Rother (The villages of Fairlight, Guestling, Icklesham and Pett)
