Your letters April 27

Affluent town?

IT gives me no great pleasure to write this letter as my wife and I greatly enjoy living in Bexhill and wish the town well for the future. However, I must put the record straight with regards to much of the content of the letters written last week by Jerry Robinson and Stephen Holliday.

We have been based in Bexhill since 1980. During that period there has been a continuous closing down of the town's quality shops, until today when only three or four remain open.

Most have been replaced by charity outlets, a sign of prosperity? If property investors and businesses are flocking into Bexhill as Jerry Robinson states, why are so many shops empty at any one time in the town centre? In fact last year we also read that businesses were "flocking in." Where are they now?

The De La Warr Pavilion "attracts thousands upon thousands every year to the town", does it? If the numbers are correct the visitors certainly do not spend much of their money at the Pavilion or indeed in the town.

Last year's trading figures prove that even with a 500,000 subsidy from local tax payers the Pavilion still made a loss. For the record, the latest survey of visitors to the town shows that staying visitors spent 27 per person per day whilst daily visitors spent 9, compared with figures for all resorts of 51 and 20 respectively. Unfortunately for Bexhill's economy the second most popular attraction after the Pavilion for these visitors was Hastings Castle! Regarding the so-called affluence of Bexhill's residents, they certainly are not using that wealth to keep the town's shops open and have not done so for 27 years at least.

If Jerry Robinson had studied the situation more carefully he would have found a rather different picture of Bexhill. Far from affluence, several areas of the town suffer deprivation, some severe, with three wards figuring amongst the most deprived areas of the country. Many of the 35 per cent of the population over pensionable age (nearly double the national average) are struggling financially, with rising council tax and utility costs and have little cash to spare after essential expenses have been met.

RDC is working hard to re-generate the town and all credit must be given to them and we all hope that their good work continues.

I wish Jerry Robinson and Stephen Holliday every success with their new ventures, the town certainly needs them to succeed if the decline of Bexhill is to cease. But please, no more spin.

JOHN BETTS

Eden Drive.

Link curse?

PETER Webb writes eloquently about the need for a local bypass. He is quite right in this, of course, but I fear that in his projected reasoning may be falling into danger of supporting the appallingly misnamed Bexhill-Hastings Link Road.

This horrendous proposal, for which I now see the Conservatives are claiming credit in their recently published pamphlets, does not link Bexhill to Hastings at all.