“I can’t believe you inhabitants of Little Common and Bexhill. Did you think that you could get the better of the powers that be at Rother District Council? You may have won the first skirmish but we are guaranteed to win the war. The rejection of the Spindlewood development by the planning committee is no more than an inconvenience. Why do you think we stopped you having your own council that was wanted by 90 per cent of those who voted in the referendum? It was to prevent objections like yours carrying the day in spite of the very professional campaign that you have waged. Let’s forget about all the ecological, infrastructure and traffic congestion problems that are all too obvious to everyone else. Our fallback position was always to get it to the full council. All those councillors that live nowhere near Bexhill will approve the plans because they know that if they don’t they could be required to have more houses built in their lovely unspoilt areas. And so Bexhill gets all the new housing developments and Rother reaps the financial incentives that are on offer. What would you do?” The comments above are my imagining of the thought process of Mr Kentfield, the chairman of the planning committee, when he was taken by surprise at the rejection of the Spindlewood application. Now Mr Maynard, the leader of Rother District Council, wants time before the application comes before full council to reprogramme councillors just in case they have the effrontery to agree with the Planning Committee decision. The majority of the local population have traditionally been supportive of a Tory council. Whilst, on balance, that may still be the sentiment many are now beginning to question the Tory councillors that they have been landed with. It is time for some new faces, people who respect local democracy rather than those that seek to steamroller us with their arrogant and dictatorial attitude.
