Housing to be built on Camber pay and display car park

On Thursday (March 16), Rother District Council’s planning committee unanimously approved plans to build 10 houses at a pay and display car park, known as the former putting green site, in Old Lydd Road.

The plans, which came from the council itself, had attracted local objections around the site’s density, design and loss of parking, particularly given the high levels of demand in summer.

However, these concerns were not supported by ward councillor Paul Osborne (Con), who said: “It is a difficult sell to the local community to be honest. As you have seen in most of the objections, or a fair number of the objections, they lament the loss of car parking spaces.

“My argument would be, ‘do you want to look at an empty car park for eight, nine months of the year or do you want to look at a good quality housing development, which hopefully will assist local people in finding somewhere to live.’

“I would personally rather see a good quality housing development.”

Concerns had also been raised about the houses becoming holiday lets rather than full time homes. While this was not a planning matter, councillors noted the council should be able to take steps to prevent the houses being used as second homes.

Cllr Andrew Mier (Lib Dem) said: “I observe and it is only an observation, that the council in this case can sell those houses on any terms it chooses. If it wishes to impose covenants, it will consult its lawyers and work out the mathematics and viability of doing that. But it can be done.“I think perhaps the feeling of councillors here is that we should perhaps give that message to officers. There is little point in trying to build for local people when they are only going to be taken over by holiday lets it is a policy issue that we need to tackle.”

Ultimately, the committee supported the proposals to approve the scheme as recommended by council planning officers.

Once built out, the development is to be accessed via a new entrance in Marchants Drive.