December 2024 - Eastbourne ECO Action Network

20 MPH Reducing Injuries

What would make the biggest difference to reducing the ‘Killed and Seriously Injured’ (KSIs) on the roads in East Sussex ? The answer looks like 20mph. This has been shown to be true in Europe and the UK. So why is East Sussex failing to understand this and will the May 2025 County elections make a difference to the approach?

ESCC Current Policy

One of the ongoing issues within East Sussex County Council (ESCC) is their determination to stick to their current policy PS05/02 towards 20 mph zones and limits. There have been numerous motions, from opposition councillors, to change their approach but all have failed. This has also meant that in the latest list of planned improvements there are none around 20mph.

Elsewhere in UK

So what would a lower limit of 20 mph do? Remembering that most higher speed limits, such as 40, 50 and 70 mph would stay the same.

- Wales – 20 mph in Wales achieved a 23% reduction of KSIs for the country as a whole
- London 20 mph in London achieved a 56% reduction.

Similar reductions have been seen in parts of Scotland and councils such as Oxford. It would appear that across the UK nothing has made as much of a difference to reducing KSI figures as 20mph .

One of the concerns is that drivers will not accept the 20mph. However research from DfT shows poor compliance at higher speeds. Plus having some vehicles been driven at 20mph may well affect the behaviour of others

Even if the number of incidents stayed the same the severity of injury is less, if the speed limit is reduced.

ESCC overall approach

So now it is worth examining neighbours, where East Sussex is worse than equivalent councils

Source West Sussex

So one view, might be that ESCC are trapped by their own bureaucracy, in reducing all their interventions to very small scale schemes. This does not have a major effect on the overall KSIs and keeps East Sussex at 150% (See above) of the England KSI average per mile. Currently large sums are spent on consultation, Traffic regulation orders, match funding, sifting, rejecting, reviews and very little on delivery and construction. This is not the most cost-effective option.

The main arguments put forward by ESCC are:-

- 20 mph limits only reduce speeds by 1 or 2 mph
- There will be a greater burden of the Police
- The ESCC targeted approach is better
- To be effective, speed limits need to be set at a level which appears reasonable to a driver
- They do not have sufficient funds to meet all the 20mph requests.

Item 4. Above should be re-worded to read, ‘where it is reasonable to a pedestrian’, who is after all the most vulnerable road user.

For more background it is worth reading the full ESCC Scrutiny Review of 20mph You can follow their logic. But the key question is, ‘Has their existing policy made a difference?’ Yes, perhaps safety is increased in very small, selected areas but overall on a county wide basis the numbers are still poor when compared to other counties.

RoSPA

Now let us look at the evidence of how 20 mph limits and zones do make a significant difference. This is an excellent review by the Royal Society of Prevention of Accidents and gives a good analysis of where they have been implemented.

“ 20 mph limits have been shown to reduce traffic speed, although not as much as 20mph zones with traffic calming. However, they are considerably less expensive to implement, which means that wider areas can be covered. They also provide additional benefits, such as encouraging more physical activity, such as walking and cycling. They can also greatly improve the character of a residential area and quality of life of the residents. 20mph limits are most appropriate for roads where average speeds are already low… and use of the road also gives the clear impression that a 20mph speed or below is the most appropriate. “

RoSPA’s guide to 20 mph

Local Transport Plan

So is there hope for the future in the Local Transport Plan 4 (LTP4)? Covering up to 2050. The answer is not encouraging, with ESCC sticking to the same mantras:
“The delivery of lower speed limits including 20mph speed limits and zones in the County is done in accordance with East Sussex County Council adopted Policy PS05/02. This policy reflects national guidance and best practice for setting speed limits.”and “The LTP4 policies clearly highlighted that the adopted ESCC Policy PS05/02 is the determinant for setting lower speed limits in the county”

Conclusion

• East Sussex has a much higher than average number of KSIs
• The current approach of small piecemeal interventions, of all types of schemes, is not making enough difference to overall road safety. Spending large amounts resisting and rejecting schemes rather than implementing.
• Higher speed limits do not make for good ‘placemaking’, a requirement of LTP4

It is hoped that the May 2025 Council elections will change the balance of power and result in a different direction.

Paul Humphreys – EEAN Transport Group

Review of 2024: a personal perspective from our Executive Director

Looking back on 2024, it’s clear that the transition to a Net Zero Eastbourne is gathering pace. Eastbourne DGH, through its decarbonisation project which started in 2022, has now become the first renewable heated hospital in the UK after having replaced its steam heating system with a 4.8MWth multi-stage heat pump system, which provides renewable heat to the building. Coupled with the solar PV array over one of its car parks, and a major insulation retrofit to improve the thermal efficiency of the hospital, the DGH will now be reducing its carbon emission by 4,100 tonnes per annum, amount to a cumulative total of 24,600 tonnes by 2030, a significant contribution towards the town’s Carbon Neutral 2030 target.

Another step change in Eastbourne’s renewable energy transition will occur when the Suncoast Solar Farm is built within the next few years, after having been granted planning permission by Eastbourne Borough Council earlier this year. When completed, the solar farm will have a capacity of 20MW, equivalent to supplying the power needs of 6,400 homes. This is a big step up from the mere 5 or 6 MW of solar power capacity currently installed across the borough. When local microgrids and regional energy pricing becomes a reality over the next decade or so, then the renewable power from the solar farm can be sold direct to local residents and businesses, reducing energy bills locally because solar power is so much cheaper than fossil fuels. There has understandably been much local concern about the need to protect the biodiversity of the site when the solar farm is built, and one of our members wrote a blog post about this issue, which can be adequately addressed if an appropriate biodiversity management plan is implemented, as many existing solar farms in the UK demonstrate.

But these large projects have to be supplemented by supporting individual households across the borough to gain access to renewable energy and energy efficiency installation schemes, as domestic properties account for more than 40% of the town’s overall carbon emissions. So Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EEAN) has this year continued to develop an ever stronger partnership with Energise Sussex Coast, an award-winning community energy cooperative. Together we have developed an Eastbourne Energy Champions network of trained volunteers able to give basic energy advice to local residents and signpost them to sources of expert help – such as Energise Sussex Coast provides – if they are in fuel poverty or need to make their homes warmer. A second round of Energy Champions training began in Eastbourne a couple of weeks ago and will continue in 2025, so if you wish to receive free training to become an Energy Champion volunteer, please let us know. The more, the merrier!

Another big source of carbon emissions in Eastbourne is the transport sector, which is not surprising given the high degree of dependence of the town on cars for moving around, coupled with the lack of Active Travel infrastructure such as safe cycle lanes. To raise awareness about the need to make local cycling safer, especially for kids going to school, the 4th Eastbourne Kidical Mass Bike Ride took place in May, which many EEAN members joined in with. The lack of bus lanes also restricts the quality and reliability of the local bus service, but progress toward rectifying this was achieved this year when East Sussex County Council approved plans to put bus lanes in Seaside, a key arterial road in town notorious for its traffic congestion. Many EEAN members engaged extensively with the consultation process in order to support the introduction of the bus lanes.

But further improvements are needed to local bus services to make travelling by bus a much better alternative to driving for local residents, which is why this year EEAN set up an Eastb ourne Bus User Group, bringing together local stakeholders to collaborate on making these improvements. To encourage people to think about driving less, EEAN’s EcoTransport Group once again organised a Car Free Day in Eastbourne, in Hyde Gardens. EEAN also held a very productive workshop in February about the latest Local Transport Plan (LPT4) prepared by East Sussex County Council.

For a fuller picture of all that is being done in Eastbourne to make the town more sustainable and carbon free, please look at our One Planet Eastbourne community ecosystem digital platform, which is hosting plans made by some local businesses, including those who get free support from EEAN to help devise such plans. Some local businesses do show great climate leadership through their efforts to become more eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable, and Richard Garland gave a keynote speech at our Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 Symposium earlier this year to explain how his business is progressing on its sustainability journey.

Given that the impacts of climate change are arriving thick and fast now, the need for climate adaptation is becoming ever more urgent. Part of such adaptation is figuring out how local food growing can be better protected from climate impacts such as increased flooding incidents, increased frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves, and so on. EEAN has partnered up with Eastbourne Food Partnership and Blue Heart to investigate how local food growers are coping with such impacts and what strategies, if any, they are using to better adapt to those impacts. Part of that investigation involved visiting local groups involved in community food growing, such as Gather Community Garden, Pevensey Bay allotments, Pevensey & Westham Community Forest Garden, and Langney Community Centre. A presentation on EEAN’s research on local food growing and climate change was made at the recent Eastbourne Food Summit.

Other highlights this year was exhibiting at the Spring Water Festival Eco Fair, wonderfully organised by Plastic Free Eastbourne, and engaging with the pop-up Climate Hubs in the Beacon shopping centre in collaboration with volunteers from the Eastbourne Climate Coalition. We’ve also engaged with the hard-working volunteers of the Eastbourne United Nations Association, who have a fantastically effective carbon sequestration programme that is supported by many residents and organisations in the borough, as well as by Eastbourne Borough Council. It’s also worth a shout-out to the magnificent volunteers of Treebourne, an organisation EEAN helped to develop in its early days. Treebourne has planted many thousands of new trees across the town, which will not only help wildlife but also create vital shade to help significantly cool the streets and public spaces when the inevitable intense heatwaves arrive.

Eastbourne Borough Council continues to reduce its own carbon emissions, and the latest yearly update to its Climate Change Strategy is now available online. An independent assessment of the progress the council is making with its Climate Change Strategy, compared with all other comparable local councils, is available from Climate Emergency UK, which has a detailed scorecard for Eastbourne. EEAN continues to collaborate with the council on ways to develop and improve its climate strategy; to assist this collaboration, all the directors of EEAN have received the Certificate in Carbon Literacy from the Carbon Literacy Project after receiving training organised by Community Energy South.

EEAN also engages in the community consultation process that the Environment Agency organises regarding its Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme, which this year published its plans for protecting the local area from flooding for the period 2027 to 2037. The success of this scheme is vital if Eastbourne – a low-lying coastal community very much in the front line of climate change – is to have any kind of viable, sustainable future in the long-term.

But while we still have our present coastline to enjoy, another EEAN project this year was to design an upgrade to the East Sussex Coastal Culture Trail, a key tourist route that connects up some of Eastbourne’s cultural assets with other cultural assets all the way to Hastings. The upgrade is necessary due to the current lack of safe connectivity between destinations along the trail, especially for walkers and cyclists. Bringing together the many stakeholders who need to collaborate on such an upgrade was a key part of the project. To facilitate that, EEAN and Bespoke Cycle Group organised a Summer Cycle Ride for them so that they could see for themselves exactly where the upgrade is needed. With Active Travel improvements to the trail, the local tourist economy would benefit from increased visitor numbers, coupled with an increased uptake in cycling, facilitating a modal shift away from car driving along the coast.

To conclude, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for the tremendous work of so many volunteers to help drive forward climate action locally, action which helps make the town better for all through co-benefits such as cleaner air, safer streets, greener public spaces, etc. We all deserve a rest over the festive period! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all!

This Annual Review was prepared by EEAN’s Executive Director, Andrew Durling, who also prepared the Annual reviews for 2022 and 2023.

Growing in a changing climate: an Eastbourne Food Summit presentation

Guest blog by Robert McGowan from the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, based on his presentation at the Eastbourne Food Summit in October 2024:

We at Eastbourne Eco Action Network are helping the town become carbon neutral by 2030, which means working with communities, businesses and the local councils on the many environmental challenges we face. One of the things we can do is bring people together and give people the chance to tell their stories and discuss openly the most effective ways to take action.

Two years ago, we organised the Sustainable Business & Solar Summit next door at the Welcome Building – and one of the key questions we wanted to ask was: we live in officially the sunniest town in the UK – so why is there so little solar energy generation? Particularly on the large flat roofs of the industrial and retail units – and the enormous car parks that surround them.

Last year we convened the Sustainable Transport & Active Travel Summit at the Welcome Building, which also brought together lots of experts and brilliant people. The leading question I wanted to ask was why Eastbourne is practically the only seaside town in the country without a safe, traffic-free way of riding a bicycle or scooter along the seafront. I’m not sure if we have the answer to that – but at least we publicly asked the question! Fast forward to this year – and the theme of the conference is sustainable food production and distribution in the local area – brilliantly organised by the Eastbourne Food Partnership. I’m not sure if they have a key question to frame the theme this year – but can I suggest one: how is it that the sunniest town in the UK can also seem to be one of the wettest?

Illustrated map of the Eastbourne area

And it’s the impact of a changing climate on local food production – growing – that I’m going to talk about today. We’re currently working on a project with Blue Heart, which is looking at innovative ways to predict and mitigate the impact of flooding in Eastbourne and southern Wealden for the benefit of local people, businesses and the environment.

Learning about the real experiences of growing is the heart of our project – as such we have developed a survey that’ll go out to everyone involved in the Eastbourne Food Partnership in the next few days.

So the theme is change. But perhaps I should start with something that hasn’t changed very much at all: the rock and soil that lies beneath us. This is one of William Smith’s famous – and beautiful – geological maps of Sussex, from 1819. It shows the green of the chalk South Downs that of
course meets the sea at Beachy Head. The light blue is Wealden clay, and the greyish bit in the middle is Hastings Greensand – which is often more substantial than the word sand suggests and forms the blocks from which St Mary’s Church in Old Town is made.

Geological map of Sussex

William Smith, 1819. The Geological Society.

The open, treeless downland was created thousands of years ago by Neolithic farmers, who built imposing, fortified villages on hilltops. Much of the East Sussex downs continued to be farmed and grazed through the Iron age and Roman times. The great forests of the Weald were sometimes cleared for hunting estates in the Saxon period that would have included livestock and crops. The Sussex iron industry was built on the iron-bearing clays and sandstones that were scorched in blast furnaces fuelled by charcoal made from the surrounding woodland.

A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales and Part of Scotland

William Smith, 1815. The Geological Society.

And of course, the different underlying rocks and clays and their varying character and chemical composition had implications for what could be grown where – and the growing community here will be far more knowledgeable about that than I am. But, as George Monbiot points out in his brilliant book Regenesis, much about soil does remain mysterious:

“Soil is this thin cushion between rock and air on which the entirety of human society and civilization is built. 99% of our calories come from it. It’s an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.
It’s more than that – it’s a biological structure, like a coral reef. It’s built by the organisms that inhabit it. If it weren’t for those organisms, there would be no soil. But it’s also got properties, unlike any other ecosystem or biological structure that we know.
In fact, there’s quite a heated debate among some soil scientists as to what soil even is. It’s got some characteristics which make it seem almost like a super organism, in that they get these extra-ordinary synchronized events taking place right across the soil. It is incredible that this system upon which we totally depend is almost unknown to us.”

Eastbourne remained an area of small rural settlements until the 19th century. Four hamlets occupied the site of the modern town. By the middle of the 1800s most of the area had fallen into the hands of two landowning families: the Gilberts (who had inherited land from the Gildredge family) and the Cavendish family. William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, hired Henry Currey in 1859 to prepare plans for an entirely new resort town – and the rest is history.

Perhaps slightly less well known, is the story of Mary Ann Gilbert. Born in Lewes in 1776, she had a relatively poor childhood after her father died. In 1814 she inherited swathes of land and property in Sussex from her uncle. She was married to Davies Giddy, who took on the Gilbert name: they lived at Gildredge Manor and had eight children together.

Mary Ann Gilbert

Shocked by the extent of hardship and poverty in Sussex in the 1820s, which led to the Swing Riots, Mary Ann set up a scheme to cultivate land at Whitbread Hollow, beyond Meads and on the way to Beachy Head, which is now a sports field belonging to Bede’s School. She hired 27 labourers to shift fertile clays from nearby marshland and transport it to the allotment site – and remove flints and pebbles. They managed to produce a healthy crop of potatoes.

By 1832 Mary Ann had nearly 200 people renting allotments, growing mangelwurzels, turnips and potatoes and the occasional pig. She kept detailed reports and calculations and encouraged good practice such as using seaweed as fertilizer and introducing water butts. The number of allotment holders had doubled to over 400 by 1844. She also founded agricultural schools at Willingdon and East Dean that were staffed by teachers from the local workhouse.

Mary Ann Gilbert’s experiment reduced poverty in Sussex by almost half. It was an agricultural revolution that was the foundation of the allotments we see across the country. I think you’ll agree, it’s a really inspiring story of a local woman and one I didn’t know until very recently – I must thank Sally Lee from Rooted Community Food for enlightening me – it’s a shame she can’t be here today.

Mary Ann Gilbert died in 1845, but her legacy is still felt. Eastbourne Allotments & Garden Society, has overseen the town’s 14 allotment sites for many years. The society currently rent out over 1,200 plots, all of which are in high demand, with hundreds of people on a three-year waiting list for a plot.

Whitbread Hollow

Could it be that allotments are actually becoming fashionable? I’m beginning to think so. And why not? We seem to be in an age of anxiety – be it technology overload or concerns about pollution or the reliability of exports and imports from neighbouring countries. And this seems to be a time when lots of people want high quality, healthy, affordable local fruit and veg – plus social contact with like-minded people, exercise and a general warm glow and sense of wellbeing. That’s certainly what I’ve picked up from my visits to the Gather and Rooted community gardens. They’ve kindly agreed to fill in our survey about growing in a changing climate – and hopefully many of the other local growers will too.

Gather Community Garden

We will analyse the results and report back in a few weeks’ time. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the very wet weather over the last couple of years – rainfall around 30% above average this year – and the fact that many allotments and gardens are located on the floodplain – the feedback so far has centred on designing ways of improving drainage on plots. French drains and wicking beds have been mentioned, along with more water butts and ponds.

In recent weeks we’ve been talking about fundraising for a community cargo bike that can help with deliveries to community fridges, food banks and retailers. We might be better off with a community cargo boat!

Rooted Community Food

A video of Robert McGowan’s presentation at the Eastbourne Food Summit is available here:

Month: December 2024