Both applications were very, very similar in content.  They were for 35 or 36 houses each, both outside the current village development boundary and both in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which in planning terms is a designation affording the highest level of protection against harm.  Both were on the northern side of each village’s High Street.

There the similarity ends, because Rother officers had argued prior to the Planning Committee meeting very strongly against the proposal, stating that “The development of the site would have an unacceptable impact on the AONB. The soft edge and rural setting of the village would be lost and the development would erode the open space and introduce a suburban built form that would be detrimental to the setting of the village in terms of visual impact and character.”  Rother Planning Committee agreed and the decision took perhaps two minutes. Wealden officers took a diametrically opposite view arguing that Wadhurst was ‘awash with AONB’ and thus afforded the land no protection at all.

Wealden members of the Planning Committee then took 100 minutes debating the matter to come to a conclusion that they would defer the matter to seek more information on traffic matters.  Neither they nor their officers could see what Rother thankfully saw so clearly that any decision of building into the High Weald countryside would be totally unacceptable. 

One of the Wealden officers sought to justify her enthusiasm for the scheme to build 35 houses in this beautiful countryside by having the temerity to suggest that the AONB would be enhanced by having the low telegraph  poles taken away and the  cable being put underground.  But at the cost of building 35 houses in that same now ‘enhanced’ field?

We hope next time it comes back to Wealden Planning Committee they will be ‘awash’ with Rother’s views.