Herbrand Walk: owner speaks out

Now owner Steve Hall says he’s giving up the fight to provide family facilities on this short stretch of coastline and has decided to sell.

Having had his appeal to the Planning Inspectorate dismissed, Mr Hall now reckons members of Herband Walk Beach Preservation Society could buy the land from him.

He suggested if each of 600 members paid £100 the total would cover what he had spent on the beach and the effort to gain planning permission from Rother District Council.

The offer extended until 5pm yesterday afternoon (Thursday December 9) after which Mr Hall said he would auction off the land to the highest bidder – travellers included.

This week he gave his reaction to the Observer and said: “That is it now.

“I am going to sell it.”

Mr Hall felt he had ticked every box in answering concerns raised about the development and said he had approval “from everybody who is anybody” but that all this stood for nothing at RDC.

He said that at present any member of the public could go to the beach and enjoy kayaking yet he was not being allowed to set up the facilities to allow this to happen “properly” and in a regulated way, with, for instance, the benefit of a lifeguard.

He also added that the inspector said that the beach huts would be an intrusion on the view from the A259 and claimed this had not been mentioned during the appeal hearing at the Town Hall in October.

He said: “This has crucified me. I thought I was going to get planning permission at the start but when I got to the appeal I knew I wasn’t going to get it, because there are too many people with too much money in Cooden.

“More people were for it than against it.

“I have tried my best. I have tried to put a bit of life into that part of Bexhill.”

Mr Hall this week also demanded RDC’s planning officer Graham Fifield serve enforcement notices to all the owners of beach huts and fishing huts along Herbrand Walk and South Cliff on the grounds that they fail to comply with the same standards demanded of him.

He claims around half of them are poorly maintained with rust water running down the doors, rotting panels “and at least three that are not coloured predominantly white”.

He added: “The fishing huts are also unsightly as the majority of them are run down or haven’t been painted and are just bare breeze blocks.”

Rother chief executive Derek Stevens said: “The council has received Mr Hall’s notes on enforcement issues in the area and will now look into them as it would with any other enforcement matter raised by an individual.”