Bexhill Cemetery Will Expand Despite Threat of Landfill

On 18th March 2010, Rother District Council Planning Committee decided to grant a new planning application (RR/2010/1783R) to extend Bexhill Cemetery in St Mary’s Lane almost to the border of the Ashdown Brickworks.

Unless ESCC withdraws its renewed proposal to allocate Ashdown for waste landfill and site-owners Ibstock decline to proceed with their landfill planning application, mourners visiting their loved ones or attending their burial will be faced with all the horrors of a rotting dump within perhaps as little as 50 yards.

The approved application represents a renewal of the permission of change of use granted under a previous application (RR/2006/3294/3R) whereby RDC would compulsorily purchase a substantial (2.92 hectares) field of agricultural land to the west of the current cemetery. It is understood that proceedings in this respect are already underway and the purchase is hoped to be completed before next summer.


The renewed application, passed unanimously by the Committee, demonstrates the determination of the Council to proceed with its plan to extend the Cemetery despite the proposal for an Ashdown landfill. They are required to provide for the burial needs of the local population and the existing cemetery is almost at full capacity. The policy to extend the existing cemetery has long been designated in the Rother District Local Plan (Policy BX10).

When the previous application was submitted, Ibstock fiercely objected to it, and when passed, took their objections as far as a Judicial Review in the High Court. It argued that the cemetery expansion was unsuitable as the quarry had been earmarked as a landfill site by the Waste Local Plan and that it hoped to use the field in question for stockpiling clay in this event. Their barrister stated that cemetery uses would expect "tranquillity" and this would be disturbed by the ‘noise of heavy machinery’ from the brickworks/landfill site and the visual impact had also not been considered. After two attempts, however, their challenge was finally dismissed on 13.1. 09 with costs awarded to RDC. (See Bexhill Observer 23.01.09)

The present application can perhaps be seen as a further challenge to Ibstock, laying ‘facts on the ground’ to dissuade them from their landfill plans. RDC made its opposition clear to the inclusion of Ashdown as a landfill site in ESCC’s Preferred Strategy for Waste during the recent consultation. The necessary expansion confirms their and BALI’s view that a landfill at Ashdown would be simply too close to local residences and amenities such as the Cemetery, the new Bexhill High School, the Highwoods and the Highwoods Golf Club.

Councillors were asked yesterday to consider the “attendant expectation of a quiet and peaceful atmosphere” at the Cemetery. It is not at all clear how such an atmosphere would be possible if both brickmaking and landfilling were to take place there, and consequently an increased amount of (waste) traffic to the site, all within earshot of cemetery users.

Nick Hollington, Chairman of BALI, writes "There would likely also be the screeching of seagulls who gather over such sites and the smell of rotting rubbish. Burrowing rats and foxes are also attracted to waste and might also turn their attention to graves. The air would likely be polluted by dust and; given the steepness of the cemetery it is inconceivable that any screening could fully hide this monstrous carbuncle on the landscape.

"Bexhill residents deserve better than to be faced with such horrors at such sensitive often distressing times when they visit their departed loved ones and the loved ones deserve better than a ‘plot by a dump’. But it is for Ibstock to withdraw its pernicious landfill plans not for the Council to withdraw its legitimate and necessary plans for the extension of the cemetery! A landfill would in any case be too close to the existing cemetery. A landfill is simply not wanted in this location- a beautiful quiet cemetery is."

Ibstock, through its lawyers, again objected to the current application on the grounds of "incompatibility with its present and future (landfilling) operations", that it is inconsistent with RDC’s Local Plan and that it contained no details of landscaping, screening etc. They also again argued that it was "premature" in the light of the field’s “potential use for stockpiling clay”.

The High Court previously rejected all these arguments given that Ibstock had no ownership rights over the field, that there was no current planning permission for a landfill (therefore its planned "future operations" were purely speculative) and that the Council did not have to address at this stage issues such as landscaping and screening. (Inevitably there will need to be in due course a full planning application by RDC to address these issues and create a suitable “buffer zone” (hedging etc.) between the Cemetery and the Brickworks.)

Thus while, of course, it is open to Ibstock to appeal against the Planning Committee’s decision there must be some doubt about whether they will. It is rather hoped that they will rather reconsider their plans for a landfill in such a sensitive location.

Nick Hollington BALI 19.03.2010