NEWSLETTER No1 September 2021
Contact Rose Hetherton WHSAG Secretary
The Council is currently running an on-line survey to find out how the West Hove Seafront is currently used and what improvements people would like to see over the next few years.
This first West Hove Seafront Newsletter encourages people to fill in the survey form before the October 3rd deadline and join in an ‘in-person consultation’ with their design consultants working on the Kingsway to the Sea Project on Saturday 25th September at the Hove & Kingsway Bowls Club from 12.00pm to 4.00pm – which we were notified of on Monday 20th September!
This Newsletter explains that these events are the result of ongoing local community action which has finally ended decades of neglect by the Council.
Kingsway to the Sea Project – the Council’s on-line Questionnaire – deadline October 3rd
The Kingsway to the Sea Project has emerged from the West Hove Seafront Action Group (WHSAG) joint work with Council officers over the past three years,
The on-line questionnaire provides a real opportunity for local residents and businesses to further influence the development of the regeneration proposals which the council officers will consult on, later this year, before submitting them to the Council’s Tourism, Equalities Committee early next year.
It is vitally important that local residents and businesses submit a response by the October 3rd deadline. The more people who take a few minutes to return the questionnaire, the greater the influence of the local community will have on the improvement of the seafront. It gives everyone the opportunity to have their say about the seafront, both as it is now and what should be done to improve it,
Community concerns and ideas for improvement 2018
The West Hove Seafront Action Group (WHSAG) fully supports the Council’s Kingsway to the Sea Project as the first step in the development and delivery of a phased West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan – a community action project which has gradually evolved through our joint work with the Council over the past
three years. A strong response to the questionnaire will strengthen the hard won and ongoing partnership working which WHSAG has established with the Council.
In autumn 2018 a West Hove Forum project highlighted growing community concerns about the neglected and deteriorating West Hove Seafront. It was clear that a community initiative was needed to focus the Council’s attention on this stretch of the seafront and secure a fair share of council seafront investment.
With the support of the then Labour Councillor for Westbourne Ward Tom Bewick, a report was produced which identified a wide range of problems in the area – in particular the underused lawns and the lack of both public and private investment in the run-down buildings along the promenade. But the report also highlighted the enormous potential for improving the area to deliver outdoor sports and leisure opportunities for the West Hove community and for visitors from elsewhere in city and beyond.
The report concluded that a West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan was needed. This would provide both a stimulus and a framework for the regeneration of the area, through an evolving variety of projects which would adapt the historic Lawns and the Esplanade to meet contemporary community needs.
The projects would be funded by a combination of public and private investment, including a fair share of the money that developers have to pay the Council to deal with the impact of their housing projects – known as Section 106 (S106) and Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL)
Pressing the council to take action 2019-20
The report was endorsed at a public meeting in January 2019 which attracted over 100 participants, including both representatives of seafront businesses and residents from the neighbourhoods immediately north of Kingsway. Following the meeting the West Hove Seafront Action Group was formally constituted as a stakeholder organisation with a remit to press for Council action. The Group includes representatives of seafront residents’ associations, seafront businesses and West Hove Forum – all volunteers – together with local ward councillors. Initial discussions established partnership working with Council officers to develop a West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan.
The vision of the proposed West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan is for a linear park, with updated leisure and sporting facilities, between King Alfred’s and the Hove Lagoon, combined with improvement of the Esplanade, including upgrading the seafront buildings. Initial meetings with council officers led to an agreement that the first priority in the development of a Plan would be a landscape design project to provide an overall co-ordinating framework for a series of projects to upgrade the Western Lawns.
This approach was fully supported agreed at a second public early last year, with over 130 participants, including local residents, representatives of seafront businesses and Hove Civic Society. The meeting elected a WHSAG Committee, in accordance with its constitution. However, with the onset of the pandemic it was not possible for the Council to fund the necessary landscape design consultancy work.
The Rockwater Initiative 2020
But the onset of the pandemic also saw the emergence of the first major investment on the West Hove Seafront for decades. Rockwater was funded by local resident Luke Davis, who supports the proposal for a West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan. The two Rockwater planning applications generated huge publicity. WHSAG member organisations worked to ensure that local residents and businesses were fully aware of the proposal and the benefits that it would bring to the local community. In parallel the community-inspired ‘Shacks by the Sea’ gave local residents a much better ‘lockdown summer’ than they would otherwise have had.
The result of this community action activity was that the second application for the full refurbishment attracted some 600 letters of support from local residents (compared to under 50 objections) – a total never before achieved by any planning application in the city. WHSAG supported the Rockwater initiative as an investment that would kick-start the regeneration of the seafront.
Landscape design project and Levelling Up bid 2021
The Rockwater development and ongoing work of WHSAG in 2020 focussed the council’s attention as never before on the future of the West Hove Lawns and the Esplanade. Earlier this year the Council allocated the funding to appoint consultants for the landscape design project. WHASG was consulted on the development of the brief for the consultants in February and shared the good news at its first Annual General Meeting on Zoom on April 1st when the 2021-22 Committee was elected.
The Committee then had a project inception meeting with the newly appointed consultants on May 7th. This meeting agreed a substantial process of community engagement in the landscape design project at key stages through to the point where it would be submitted to the Council’s Tourism, Equalities, Communities and Culture Committee in September. But this process was overtaken by events which set the project back by some six months.
In late May the Council decided to make a last minute bid for support from the government’s Levelling Up Fund, for what it described as the Kingsway to the Sea Project and diverted their landscape consultants to work on the bid. The first we heard of this was a request to provide a letter of support for the bid at two days’ notice, which we submitted on June 18th explaining how it would build on our three years’ work.
We were brought back into the loop at a meeting of West Hove Forum on July 21st where Donna Chisholm, Assistant Director Culture, Tourism and Sport revealed that they had submitted a bid for a £10.8m scheme, but gave no details, However, the consultants shared some of their initial ideas for a phased programme of landscape improvements which include better access to more active green spaces, retaining the first lawn next to King Alfred’s as an events space, more shade and sheltered spaces and the possibility of a skate park and a BMX pump track on the lawn next to Hove lagoon. These ideas will be presented more fully for discussion at the ‘in-person’ meeting on Saturday 25th September.
In October-November the consultants will feed the results of the questionnaire into their draft landscape proposals for discussion with WHSAG prior to a public meeting, hopefully well before Christmas. Also the Council will hear the result of their bid for major funding. They are not hopeful but if unsuccessful will bid again for government support.
It’s not yet clear when or whether the content of the bid will be made public. But it is clear that the Council has put lot of resources into developing a regeneration programme which includes both the Lawns and the Esplanade. Thus even a failed bid is a significant step forward as it will provide the basis for the ongoing, collaborative development of a phased West Hove Seafront Improvement Plan to be implemented, albeit more slowly, with a fair share of Council resources, including developer contributions.
West Hove Forum 