Rother’s double dealing?

In early summer last year Rother District Council (RDC) wrote to Rye Town Council (RTC) announcing that it had earmarked a number of assets across the District that it was considering selling off, including at least three plots of land in Rye. They wondered whether RTC would want to consider buying back land it had previously owned and transferred to RDC for nothing in the infamous early 1970s local government reorganisation.

RTC wrote back to RDC saying it was interested in acquiring the plot of land in Wish Ward opposite the Pipemakers Arms and also, possibly, the 71 acres that make up Camber Fields – the huge field just the other side of the Monkbretton Bridge, which is grazed by sheep, affords uninterrupted views across the river and the fishing harbour to the iconic Rye citadel and is the site for the launching of fireworks at Rye Fawkes, the annual bonfire celebrations. For the first site, RDC intimated it was going to look for £10,000 and for the second, £50,000.

On August 3 RDC’s Cabinet met and the minutes show it agreed that it would offer the Wish Ward site to the neighbours who have tended and cared for it for many years at no cost to the ratepayers and/or RTC and that it would offer Camber Fields to the tenant farmer, or an “appropriate buyer ” or sell it at an auction. An appropriate organisation? RTC, which used to own the land, or maybe the Rye Fund – a charity? Or a local Community Interest Company?

Since then silence from RDC. Until a couple of weeks ago when it announced it was going to sell the plots at auction in London on May 9. And while it has subsequently withdrawn Wish Ward from the auction so either the neighbour or Town Council can buy the land it has refused steadfastly to do the same with Camber Fields! No-one came back to them and made an offer they say. But RDC minuted that it would offer the land to appropriate buyers – it didn’t do that and yet it organised deals elsewhere.

RDC’s Cabinet minutes clearly state that they believe “it is not in the public interest to retain” the land offered for sale! Could this be why they refuse to pull the assets from the auction in faraway London and negotiate with RTC and other appropriate bodies? Because if they sold it to a public body it clearly would be evidence that there is public interest to retain the land!

RDC is eager to offload the toilets to RTC, it is eager to hand over the Landgate Tower (with an expected bill simply to stabilise it of well over £300,000) to Rye. But when it comes to our other assets it can’t and won’t talk to RTC or other “appropriate” potential community purchasers! It won’t pull one lot from the auction, but it will pull others!

This is a shameful disregard for the people of Rye, made all the more surprising in that our very own Rother Councillor Lord Ampthill, who is meant to represent Rye in Bexhill, is RDC Cabinet Member with the portfolio responsibility for Finance, Resources and Value for Money! In other words he is in charge of this asset fire sale and yet will not allow people in Rye time to prepare a negotiated bid for assets that the town used to own and Rother acquired at zero cost!

I fear that on May 10 the citizens of Rye will wake up to find that some time the previous day at a hotel in central London, along with a ragtag bunch of repossession flats in southeast London, decaying bungalows in windswept Lincolnshire valuable long-standing and not inconsiderable chunks of the Rye townscape will have new possibly deeply inappropriate owners. And RDC Cabinet members will have to wrestle with their consciences!