Mayoral update

We had a very positive town council meeting on Monday with lots of good news for Rye.

Firstly, the pool and leisure centre. After putting in a bid to the government’s Levelling Up fund, which was a rigorous and time consuming task by Rother officers, Ben Hook, director of place, came to the meeting and announced that the centre would receive £650k of money for capital expenditure. The is wonderful news because we know that there are a lot of things there that need repairing and replacing and this will help to cover those capital expenses. A hearty thank you to all those officers involved for their endeavours, which has paid off.

The town council also heard from Barry Nealon, chair of the CIO community group looking to take on the operation of the leisure centre, that they had finished their business plan, which councillors had pre-sight of, and that they were confident that they could run the centre if given a 20-year lease by East Sussex County Council. There is one sticking point at the moment, and that is that the new lease must have six-monthly break clauses in it to ensure that, if the worst happened and the CIO ran into difficulties, then the financial burden on the town council would not be crippling. Councillors unanimously endorsed this, so the CIO now has a remit to carry on its work and hopefully look to take over in 6-12 months time. If we do not get this clause from the freeholder, the county council, then we will have to walk away as it is too much jeopardy to put on a small town council.

Councillors later heard from Cllr Sophie Thorpe (formerly Judge) that she wants to work with staff at the centre to run a youth club there to support 11-16 year olds for a couple of hours a week, and the council agreed to support this initial endeavour with some funding to help it get off the ground. In addition, the town council would bring forward spending to improve the skate park on the Salts, again to help youngsters in the town.

In other positive news, the Rye Chamber of Commerce has received a share of £185,000 of Levelling Up money, split between Rye, Battle and Bexhill chambers. A hearty well done to Jane and Sarah for all their hard work in putting this together. They are a tower of strength in representing our business community and are to be congratulated for all that they do. They have also worked constructively with the town council on a tourism strategy, which will see resources pooled rather than partly duplicated between both bodies.

I am aware that there is some unease about the town council spending money on new robes for councillors during a cost of living crisis and it was moved that this should be re-considered at a future meeting.

The two closed public conveniences will remain shut – leaving Station Approach and Lucknow Place open. We are working with other parishes to address the obstacles to taking on the conveniences and other services (especially grounds maintenance) from Rother.

There was only one nomination for deputy mayor elect, Cllr Chris Hoggart and his name will be put forward formally at Mayor Making on Monday, May 6. Well done Chris.

Also on Monday, as chair of the Cinque Port Champions, Cllr Gilbert visited the Kent archives in Maidstone, to see how we can promote the medieval documents of our port towns, to make them easier to access for students and researchers. This is all part of a wider drive to promote the Cinque Ports towns and share best practice. The solicitor for the ports also visited Greenwich Museum this week to see if there were possibilities to develop more awareness of the towns at a national level, and we should hear more about this in due course.

This might have been my last full council meeting as mayor, because the next scheduled meeting at the town hall will be for Mayor Making. Over the next month I have some lovely things to look forward to, including a visit to New Romney to support their mayor’s charity, and to attend Winchelsea’s Mayor Making on Monday, April 1. We have also been singing to raise money to help our local school children to experience an exchange with youngsters in Montreuil sur Mer in France. They will be visiting in May. Most of this has been done at the Waterworks, with the support of landlord David Roder, and we will be handing over £1,207 to the school in a couple of weeks.

We were delighted to be asked to provide music for out very own town crier’s 60th birthday at the Mermaid on Sunday, March 23, and to have done the same for the mayor of Winchelsea’s big birthday a couple of weeks ago.

Image Credits: Dover Town Council .