The deadline to comment online about the planned development on Winchelsea Road in Rye is this Friday August 9. The proposals include homes, retirement housing and a new Aldi supermarket.
Hundreds of comments have already been uploaded to the Rother District Council planning website. You can read details about the proposals – and the comments – here:
Supermarket – Aldi – Click here
Homes – Decimus – Click here
Retirement housing – McCarthy Stone – Click here
There’s overwhelming support for the supermarket development judging by the online comments, with a more mixed view of the homes and retirement housing plans. In Rye Town Council’s submission it firmly rejects the proposals for what the developers describe as “a part two / part four storey building comprising 44 one and two bedroom retirement living units for older persons with associated communal facilities, parking and landscaping.” The council says: “Rye needs cheaper accommodation for younger local people – rather than more expensive accommodation aimed at retired people generally.”
Rother District Council’s planning committee is set to discuss the proposals on Thursday September 9.
House building targets
Last week, housing secretary Angela Rayner revealed her plans to overhaul the planning rules in England with the aim of delivering a million and a half new homes by 2029. The plans, which she says "won’t be without controversy”, will mean housing targets will once again become mandatory and local councils faced with seeing their power to block new developments reduced.
The new targets see Rother with one of the biggest increases in new housing in the country - the 48th highest out of 296 English local authorities. The new target is 880 houses a year, a 213% increase on the current three year average of 281 a year.
In Hastings the target will go up by 47.4% from 490 homes a year currently to 722. To hit this target an increase in the average build rate over the last three years of 115 a year will need to go up by 530%. The seventh highest in the country.
Affordable housing plans in Battle
As we wait for the news on whether the developers of the Ferry Road site in Rye will put back affordable homes into their proposals, plans for 130 affordable homes have been approved for a new site in nearby Battle. On Monday July 29 Rother District Council approved plans to restore the low cost housing into the council-backed development in Battle. The Blackfriars development will also see 70 open market sales.
The full council agreement marks a significant change in direction, as members had been warned in November that the delivery of affordable homes looked to be no longer possible due to delays and rising costs associated with the project.
In a report, officers said this position had improved as a result of several factors: positive progress with the infrastructure element of the scheme; changes to the overall design; and a competitive tender process to appoint a new main contractor to build the homes.
As well as restoring the affordable homes, councillors agreed several other next steps for the project. These included the sale of the site to the council-owned Rother District Council Housing Company (RDCHC) for a nominal price of £1 and authorisation for the same company to enter into a construction agreement with a contractor. They also agreed for the council to enter into a Development Loan Agreement with RDCHC, which will provide the company with up to £15m to deliver the project.
In June, an independent report concluded the developers of the Ferry Road site in Rye were wrong not to include social housing in their updated planning application. In December 2023 amended plans for 88 residential properties were submitted to Rother District Council explaining affordable housing was no longer financially viable.
Image Credits: Harris Partnership , Google Earth .
Despite the general consensus that a new supermarket would be totally desirable in Rye, the impact of this proposal on increased traffic congestion and an already inadequate sewage and waste water disposal system, is totally undesirable and impractical.
Hopefully the planners will be meticulously thorough in rejecting the scale of this Aldi supermarket (designed for 15,000 people when the population of Rye is only is 4,500). Surely the developers can go back to the drawing board to consider Rye’s real housing priorities here for genuinely affordable social housing and an appropriately sized supermarket on a site where traffic flow is not going to be a problem, especially during our busiest tourist season.