This explains how paving slabs were replace with tarmac by mistake in St Leonards

Following-up on the featured article in your edition of July 16, headlined ‘Outcry as ‘oversight’ results in ‘civic butchery’ of street.’ It should also be emphasized that what is referred to as ‘standard tarmac’ by the quoted county council director is evidently being used on a regular basis for ‘maintenance repairs.’

This tarmac virus appears to be spreading exponentially all over town and is particularly apparent in the Old Town Conservation Area. Here the stretches of York-Stone paving within High Street and All Saints Street for instance are becoming increasingly disfigured by what one resident of recently blighted Eversfield Place describes as ‘possibly the least sustainable’ material that the council ‘could have chosen.’

It defies belief that such civic vandalism is not just condoned but evidently demanded from county council contractors.

At one time Hastings Borough Council controlled highways and pavement maintenance with its own directly employed workforce. There were also ‘works supervisors’ and a conservation officer.

Surely even in these ‘contracting-out’ days, someone must be employed to oversee municipal work and to comment on works proposed for conservation areas?The county council, according to your article, ‘carried out an inspection of the footway in Eversfield Place and identified a large number of broken paving slabs ... which were deemed a safety risk for pedestrians.’ One wonders if they also investigated the reasons why so many slabs had become broken? In the Old Town the damage is invariably caused by parking on the footways and their use by HGV delivery vehicles. Such misuse appears rarely to be subject to any enforcement action.

The county council has a responsibility to protect the town’s designated conservation areas in particular and to give the lame excuse for the ‘civic butchery’ of our streets as an unfortunate ‘oversight’ is simply not good enough.’

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