Green space 'preserved'

Churchill Retirement Living stressed the company planned to build on only a small front section of Gullivers Bowls Club in Knole Road.

The remaining area would provide a new seven-rink outdoor bowling green plus a new clubhouse and a low level indoor bowling facility.

Ian Byers, the company's south east region managing director (pictured with model), said he thought some of the opposition came about because people were under the misapprehension they planned to build on the whole area.

"We were approached last year by the bowls club because of their dire financial circumstances.

"Their facilities have been condemned by environmental health and they cannot entertain visiting teams to tea and sandwiches."

He said unlike the previous application by another company turned down three years ago, Churchill Retirement Living had worked with the bowls club to find a solution to the club's survival on the site and the building of sheltered housing.

Their research showed despite a number of existing schemes there was a demand for sheltered accommodation in the area.

"It was important to note a typical purchaser is between 76-77 years old, tends to be recently widowed, from a detached property within a five-mile radius of the scheme which tends to free up housing in the locality."

It was proposed to excavate the rear area so the new indoor bowls centre would be semi-basement level and the roof no higher than garden fences on the adjoining gardens in Cantelupe Road.

"Cooden Drive is our first site in Bexhill and has gone very well indeed," he said. "In reality something is going to happen to the Knole Road site. If the bowls club can't carry on it will just become a derelict site.

"We are a commercial company. We are not going to build a scheme which isn't going to sell.

"From the research we have done we think there is a demand."

He said the application had been put in as one - to build the apartments and the bowls club - to ensure Gullivers' future.

"We included the safeguard that we can't occupy the apartments until the bowls facilities are built.

"We are not just going to build without including facilities for the bowls club's future."

He said if planning permission was granted for the 41 sheltered apartments, after the completion of technical drawings, he envisaged work would start simultaneously on both the housing and the bowls facilities.

Neighbouring residents have been voicing objections to the proposal and want to see the space preserved for recreational use.

hey have formed themselves into the Cantelupe Gardens Park Association, a sub-committee of the Gullivers Action Group which previously opposed an application to build on the area.

r See Letters, page 6