Tag Archives: ESCC

St Anne’s School site Lewes – Still nothing happening!

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St Annes’s school in Lewes, East Sussex was a school for children with special needs. It closed suddenly at the end of the summer term in 2005. That was 16 years ago! Since then the ESCC has allowed the land to remain derelict!

The site is right next door to the ESCC HQ building. One wonders how the Leader and Cabinet members can have simply ignored the place for so long as they must be able to see it for their office windows. It is shameful that this valuable site is not being used for education or housing!

Check out this report on Derelict Places Also check out this video of the site also from 2017 from Exploring With Lucy

National Park ignore local residents – Lewes SHALL have a new hotel!

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Well, it is all over, and we fear that Lewes will never be the same again. Lewes residents returned from a very frustrating hearing at Midhurst yesterday where the vote went in favour of Quora by 7 to 3.

Yet again, the officers of the South Downs National Park Authority recommended approval. Only three members of the public were allowed to speak for 3 mins each. The developer responded with their speaking slots. Then the chairman selected Tom Jones (also a Lewes District Councillor and ‘Lead Planning Member) to open the discussion.  He was in full support of this development and praised the architect for all his ‘improvements.’ He pointed out that, as Lewes already had a building like Waitrose just around the corner one more won’t make much difference as Lewes is full of different styles of building anyway!  He wasn’t concerned about the waste disposal situation from the demolition. Mr Jones seems to think it a perfect solution that all the waste from the demolished building will be taken up the High Street in small skip lorries makes the whole thing ok as far as he is concerned! Perhaps he wouldn’t say the same if it was in his village of Ditching! His most outrageous comment was to say there will be no parking problem because all the visitors to the hotel development can park in the North Street Quarter where there will be parking for 300 cars!!  Our comment: i) the North Street Quarter has not yet been agreed, let alone built,  and ii) it is a very long walk with all your suitcases from North Street to get to the Premier Inn.

Tom Jones’ talk seemed to set a precedent and others then followed suit like sheep and agreed – APART from three members, – Charles Peck and Neville Harrison spoke with passion and eloquence along with Barbara Holyome.  But, it was not enough and the vote went against us – the chairman also voted against us.

The case officer, Ransford Stewart, seemed very unsure of his facts – he referred to the Fitzroy Memorial Library as the Fitzroy Hospital?! Also he was unsure of how to pronounce ‘Lewes’! This was compounded by the fact that most of the members were not familiar with Lewes!

We feel that residents of Lewes have been let down by the Friends of Lewes and Lewes Conservation Area Advisory Group (CAAG) – they both supported this latest version of the plans!

So there it is – after a long battle it seems to be all over and we have to sit back and wait for Quora, Juice Architects, Premier Inn & Whitbread PLC to ruin (and run) our lovely old town.

 

 

Another revised application!

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Here we go again! It seems the consortium of big business including, Whitbread plc, Premier Inn, Quora Developments and the officers at the SDNPA are determined that Lewes will have a massive new building including a large hotel and shops (and maybe bars & restaurants?) whether the people of Lewes want it or not.

Juice Architects & Quora have modified their plans slightly to overcome objections raised by the committee members of the SDNPA. These plans are now on the National Park website. Click here to review them and make your comments. This time we only have until 3 December to get our comments in.

The latest design looks like this:

massing view

 

 

 

 

Please note – this is the architect’s drawing. The brickwork is largly grey with a grey roof. The architect cleverly avoids showing a large scale drawing in context with the grade II Fitzroy Memorial Library which in fact is right next door.  It all seems similar to the one which the members rejected.

Quite apart from the design issues, and the oversized ‘massing’ of the building, ESCC Highways officers don’t seem to be concerned about the car parking problems that some 12 shops and a 59 bedroom hotel will cause. The developer is not buying the old magistrates court car park so there is no telling what is going to happen to that. Also ESCC have ignored concernes about the problems of HGV vehicles travelling to and from the site through our narrow streets to take away the masses of rubble that will be left after the demolition. Neither have they addressed concernes about the considerable number of HGVs which will be required to bring in the materials to build the new hotel. On top of this they can’t tell us about road closures! The developer’s plan shows the project taking 18 months. So we have to to face 18 months (or more?) of HGV traversing out narrow streets!