Former West St Leonards bathing pool development - Call for ‘meaningful consultation’

At a meeting last Wednesday (December 16), Hastings councillors debated a petition calling for the council to carry out “meaningful consultation” before reaching any agreement with developers at the former bathing pool site in West St Leonards.

The council, which owns the site, plans to appoint developers to build out the area into a mixed residential and commercial development, with up to 150 new homes.

An electronic version of the petition on the council’s website had been signed by 268 people, although lead petitioner Lucie Mason said there were many more signatories.

Ms Mason said: “I’m here as a representative of over 2,500 residents and interested parties who have signed this contract and are really concerned about the future of this unique site. 

“We know that this site could be the catalyst for regeneration of the West St Leonards area. As a seaside town our local economy relies heavily on tourism – something that is likely to increase in light of the recent pandemic – [and] to overlook the massive potential this site has to offer seems ludicrous.”

She added: “The council gave us assurances that the focus for this site is to be for a leisure destination, yet it would appear that the development is focused on housing with a few token add-ons under the heading of leisure.

“We were told that housing was needed to fund the redevelopment, but we don’t feel this is the only option. The town fund recently invited applications for a share of £26m.

“A fully-costed and comprehensive proposal was submitted by community groups, despite it not being successful we feel that there are other funding options which could be available and these should absolutely be fully investigated before relying on a housing development to fund any regeneration of this site.”

Ms Mason went on to say residents felt it was unacceptable not to hold a public consultation on proposals to redevelop the site until the council had secured a developer. 

This view was not shared by Cllr Peter Chowney, however, who is responsible for the site’s development as part of his cabinet portfolio.

In answering the petition, Cllr Chowney argued the site has long been allocated for a mixed use development in a number of local plans and that there had been public consultation around allocating the site. 

He said: “There were also some fairly stormy meetings, I’ll admit, two or three years ago where we met with local residents and a lot of people, it’s true, didn’t want to see the site developed at all. 

“But of course we had already included it in the local plan and kind of had that debate about whether the site should be developed and how.

“A lot of ideas came out of that. Some of those included artists’ studios, a slipway, play areas, kind of village green areas and holiday accommodation. We went out to try and find a developer who thought they could do all that, as well as building part of the site out for housing. 

“The housing I’m afraid was necessary, because so far we have not found any other source of grant funding to fund that development and also because we need the housing too.”

He acknowledged that the process of appointing a developer had been delayed, but said there would be further public consultation once a developer was in place.

Part of the delays had been due to the complex leasehold agreements at the site, with the council intending to retain ownership of the land’s freehold.  This, Cllr Chowney said, would ensure the council retained control of how the development would be built out. 

Cllr Chowney added: “I think there has been quite a lot of consultation on it already over the years, but not over the last couple of years because we’ve been in the process with the lease.

“It is a complicated process. It would have been much easier simply to sell the site to the developer, but then we would have only been left with planning to control what was built there.”