D4Coffee

Added; <2009, Last changed; 30/09/2017, 29/02/2020

Old this webpage; http://ww1.andrew-lohmann.me.uk/environment/a21-at-castle-hill/access-to-hastings/d4coffee/

Mr Derrick Coffee,                                                                                          xx, Andrew Road,

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx,                                                                                          High Brooms,

Eastbourne,                                                                                                  Tunbridge Wells,

BN22 xxxx.                                                                                                   Kent, TN4 xxx.

                                                                                                                    Tel: 01892 xxxx

                                                                                                                    01892 xxxxx (work)

                                                                                                    E-MAIL: AndrewHLohmann@compuserve.com

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                                                                                                                    FILE: d4coffee.doc

                                                                                                                    24 August, 2000

Access to Hastings Study – re your notes on High Brooms

Dear Derrick,

Since forwarding comments on the economic impact to GOSE and SDG and the strategies to SDG I have received your comments. I agree with your page 3 on comments on Longfield Road. It may be implied from your comment that capacity of the A21 is inadequate for the industrial estate. This is not the case, traffic hold ups are due mainly to traffic cueing to enter T/W on the A264 (Pembury Road), and via Longfield Road and residential areas Sherwood and Ferndale Road. The strongest policies in the T/W local plan are to oppose anything that would increase such traffic. I have done the best I can in the time to make responses on the strategies and the economic impact. The real conclusion that I considered but did not put is; There must be a party political motive, in the conservatives making an apparent U-turn on road building. If the outcome is grandiose road building then the conservatives can say Labour government did it not them. If the outcome is green Michael Foster the Labour MP for Hastings did not deliver his election promises. Either way the outcome for the MP is much the same as it was for Jackie Lane the previous MP a cardboard model of her was hung by the neck at Winkel Island for many months by the fishermen. SDG’s representative Chris Whitehouse may have given the impression to readers of the Tunbridge Wells and Crowborough Leader that the favoured strategy is number five. He was picture at the exhibition standing beside strategy 5. It seems a little naive of SDG to have let this happen. The Courier of 18 August has an article on the Tyler alternative proposal to tunnel through Castle and making the existing road two lanes and the tunnel the other two lanes. Mr Tyler owns or used to own Castle Hill, and much of the industrial estate. His personal secretary came to a meeting of stop the road, the group Val myself and some others started in autumn 1997. Although still road building with environmental damage, it addresses the substandard bend, noise, and visual intrusion of the approved road scheme. There are also merits in that it costs lots of money and helps to cloud the issue giving road builders more options to consider. My own letter of opposition to road building is published, and there is an article about the Bexhill & Battles MP’s opposition to John Prescott’s road building proposal. The Kent Messenger apparently has a front page referring to an article a historian Nigel Nickelson OBE from Penshurst wrote opposing the Lamberhurst bypass (second bypass you may note that Lamberhurst already has a bypass possibly built to allow horses or early low power cars to avoid the original steep hill).

I am attending a meeting of the London Orbital Study on the 31 August. I note that the company running the study Brown and Root’s parent is Halliburton a US company into engineering, Well Drilling, and Russian ICBM decommissioning. The contract is £2.3M, for the study and looks like it will be for 18 months.

In peace

Andrew Lohmann