At a recent meeting of Rye Town Council’s Planning & Townscape committee, councillors heard that Rother District Council (RDC) had identified eight plots in Rye earmarked for housing development.
In total, RDC is looking at 900 development sites across the district but has not released the locations of where the eight sites in Rye are.
The meeting heard that it was unclear if all eight mirror those previously identified in Rye’s Neighbourhood Plan. The planning meeting also discussed new government legislation that intends to "revolutionise" the planning system to get more homes built where they are most needed. The proposed new legislation is causing a stir in the home counties, and is given as one of the reasons why the Conservative party lost the recent Chesham and Amersham by-election, and could well force Rother to accept many more new homes.
A number of councillors raised their concerns about a plot of land at the top of Udimore Road as a site for future development. The plot is privately owned and, you may remember, was the site where BP had applied to build a petrol station but came up against fierce opposition because of its location close to the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and because it acts as a "gateway" to Rye.
Those councillors who spoke on the topic were unanimous in that this site needs to be protected and not built upon with Councillor Cheryl Creaser saying, “We will need to fight this tooth and nail.”
Watch this space.
Update: The original map used to illustrate this story was from an early draft of the neighbourhood plan, this has been replaced with the map from the final version:
DRAFT Version 5 - 20 April 2015 (rother.gov.uk)
