Concerns are growing over the Pevensey Bay Holiday park, which has been described by a number of local residents as being ‘out of control’ in relation to developments.
A tipping point seems to have been reached on Sunday (August 12), when what was described as a ‘large truck arrived set up a screen on the site, right in front of the homes alongside the site and then blasted a film for the kids all day with the sound going right across all the homes in Timberlaine Road’.
Angry residents were seen knocking on doors saying; ‘something must be done’.
Bay Life understands that protestations about what had been done fell on deaf ears at the Holiday Park home, with one explanation being that “the Holiday Park has a blanket licence to put on the show”, followed by an alternative explanation that the event was a ‘one off’.
A holiday home owner, who asked not to be named, said that he was aware that there had been a number of complaints, following the day, but that the owners of the site were doing ‘a tremendous amount to support families, and in particular children’ with their activities.
Bay Life also understands that Wealden Council has received a number of complaints following the activities on Sunday..
Behind the incident are a litany of complaints about the Holiday Park home.
In 2017, vans were seen littered around the site in local roads because the owners appears not to allow vans with signage to be parked on the site.
One owner who was asked to move his van said ‘I can park where I like’, after agreeing to move his van, having parked outside a home for four days, forcing an ambukance that had arrived at an emergency to park alongside the home. Looking at the road he said “Well that was not a problem was it?”.
Behind the complaints a general feeling appears to be emerging that developments on the site are now out of control.
One local home owner who asked not to be named told Bay Life “they do not give a f**k, they just do what they like.”
Digging behind the homes of residents up against the fence of the site has led residents to ask all kinds of question about development applications, conservation areas and ownership of the site, which appears to be changing.
When challenged about the development and decision making on the site, owners Park Holidays, told Bay Life (14 August 2017),
“As the new owners of the park, we are keen to be good neighbours, and to ensure that our guests continue to make a substantial contribution to the regional economy through their spending in local businesses. Although parking policies on the holiday park are unlikely to change for the foreseeable future, it’s important for anyone leaving their vehicle on public roads or public land to ensure that they are complying with any parking restrictions in force”.
With the significant growth and investment that has taken place over the last year on the site, the time appears to have come for a formal challenge to the owners of the site.
Park Holidays is right in saying that the site brings economic benefit to Pevensey Bay in the form of spending in local businesses. The history of the site is deeply embedded in the pysche of the community. Of course the site, in addition, provides a number of jobs for local people.
Many local people started their Pevensey Bay Life on the site, before migrating to home ownership in the village, but clearly the growth in the site and the developments taking place are becoming of critical concern to local residents, particularly residents with homes that sit alongside the site.
The site like many mobile home sites in the country, is becoming a huge money making machine.
There is an argument to be made that the generational crisis in housing for people in this country is being exploited by these companies, with the presentation behind all the publicity, hiding the fact that the sites are becoming an overspill as alternative homes for people.
Residential rights for people on these sites do not exist.
The people that benefit from these circumstances in the long term, there is an argument to be put, are the mutli-million pound owners of the sites.
Bay Life understands that the new residents association being formed has people involved with relevant experience of fighting the companies that have owned the site over the years.
As well as someone with county council experience, we have been told that there are also people with public sector experience as organisers within the trades union movement, and in one case a campaigner who fought the owners of the site nearly twenty years with a campaign that received local press attention.
New owners took over the site, leaving some poor people who had loved the site and been happy caravanners there, in some case for over twenty years, to pack their bags.
People with old caravans were given two weeks to leave. In one case a pensioner couple was found sitting in their van putting their belongings in black plastic bags sobbing their hearts out.
The campaign, lead by four caravan owners, led to a stay of excution for people on the site for a period of a year. A specialist solicitor was employed.
Nearly twenty years later, with so much changed in the local community and so much changed with the national picture, we live in a different world.
Whether or not a small residents association in Pevensey Bay can do anything to stop the muti-million pound juggernaut that is represented by the owners of the park home here seems questionable.
As one irate resident put things to Bay Life laughingly, “I will tell you what, if we brick up their entrance overnight, they would soon notice would they not, maybe we should do to them what they are doing to us residents”.
What does seem of legitimate concern about the growth and decision making and applications being made by the owners of the park home site is that the wellbeing of local residents is now being threatened in a number of ways by what is happening.
What is clearly necessary here is for there to be some kind of dialogue between the owners of the park holiday home and the new residents association.
The joy of being part of the park home should not be at the expensive of the location, community and specialness of Pevensey Bay.
Is there a bigger story here about what is happening in the country?
Are holiday homes in some ways becoming ghettos that sharpen in full colour the poverty of thinking about the desperate need to see small coastal locations supported from both an economic perspective and a social perspective?
Does the money made go to the 1066 store in Pevensey Bay, the public houses, the restaurants, the hairdressers, the dog groomers, the services and the fragile economic structure of the Bay?
Clearly, as the owners indicate, this is partly the case.
But the holiday park has services that are their own. The vast majority of the money clearly goes into the pockets of the owners of the site.
Why do the owners not open a community shop on the site with the deliberate intention of promoting the services and businesses in the village of Pevensey Bay, if only as a community gesture?
They could probably do this overnight with the sale of one £80,000 mobile home.
These ghettos may be gated ghettos, and to enter all that is needed is £80,000 for your van, £5,000+ for your plot fees a year and then £40 a week for your dog, but at the some time if you stand on the other side of the line, you can come to Pevensey Bay and walk your dog for nothing.
East Sussex County Council is threatened with the possibility of bankruptcy within three years, there is no bank now in Pevensey Bay, the library has been forced to close, even the grass cutting contract has been ended by the county council and passed to the parish council, which will have to find the money to undertake the service.
Meanwhile on the other side of the dividing line in Timberlaine Road, a large truck arrives, sets up a big screen and blasts out the wonderful music of a Disney film across this part of the Bay to the squeals of delight of all the children that sit down on the private grass for a Sunday treat.
And why not? The hard working Mums and Dads on the site have paid handsomely for the service, they work all year to be able to afford holiday homes for their families.
The question here is not perhaps that we can no longer hear the church bells from St, Nicolas church on a Sunday, but that in the separation of these two worlds there is danger.
The park holiday home says come to the sunny wonderful Sussex coast and all the old world charms of unique Pevensey Bay, and they are right to promote the park home in this way, because everything that they say is true. We have a 200 year old story to tell.
But if their message becomes at the expensive of the local people that live here, the community begins to resist the message.
Public opposition to the holiday park could potentially damage the name of the company that owns the site, the name of the holiday park and in the process, the name of Pevensey Bay.
Perhaps the Sunday in which the company blasted Disney to all the children on the site and across the community line was also the day that they threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Dialogue and communication will help the circumstances.
Are we months or just a few years away from a Chelsea tractor owner coming to the Park home for the season, returning to be asked what they thought of Pevensey Bay Village, responding with pride by saying ‘no idea never went into the village’.
Pevensey Bay and the holiday home site are attached by an umbilical chord that dates from 1948. The holiday home site needs Pevensey Bay and Pevensey Bay needs the holiday home site. Perhaps what is important is that the vital mutuality of the relationship is acknowledged.
Whatever is said by the new residents association, should be noted.
The nature of the latest planning application made by the owners of the site, we understand, will form the basis of the inital media release by the residents association. Bay Life will publish the media release.
The Pevensey Bay Journal is also to take up the story in a forthcoming print edition of the tabloid newspaper.
