1) Any replacement for the Martins Oak surgery needs to be north/west of the town centre, to balance the provision in the south/east at the railway station. One possibility is next to the fire station, either where the ambulance crew houses are or on the site of the present youth centre, another is next to the primary school on the field already owned by ESCC. Another possibility is at the Watch Oak, which is a site earmarked as suitable for development.

2) If development for employment is contemplated around the junction of Marley Lane with the A21 it will be expensive. This area is already subject to flooding, which global warming and sea level rise will only exacerbate. Flood-proofing any development here will be very costly. It would be better to avoid development here and restrict it to extending the business park half way along Marley Lane.

3) Present plans call for housing development (beyond that already planned and committed) at a rate of less than ten per year for the next 15 years. This is insufficient to keep Battle a growing and vibrant town and should be at least doubled if not trebled. Battle seems to have an aging population and we need to encourage more young people into the town so that it has a future beyond the next generation, by which time many of the current residents will not be around to contribute to the economy.

4) Parking provision in the town is not actually too bad, but there are an awful lot of -especially elderly- people who don't want to walk too far from their cars. Tough. They should walk more; it would be better for their health and the planet's. These are the people who contribute to the congestion by parking on double yellow lines and then complain about the congestion they have caused. What is needed in Battle, at least in the first instance, is far more rigorous application of the present parking regulations so that people become accustomed to using the car parks. There is a frequently-repeated call for locals to park free; this is nonesense and must be resisted. Locals can walk into town; if they choose to use their cars they should be charged for the privilege. Any new provision must recognise the shape of the town and be placed somewhere near the railway station, both to balance provision and to keep commuter traffic from parking on the roads. Incidentally, why can there not be yellow lines around Glengorse, with parking by residents permits only?

5) There needs to be an expansion of retail space in Battle but this needs to be in one large unit, not several small ones. Small shops tend not to survive long here, in fact the newsagent is the only small shop that survives of those which were here when I arrived in Battle 20 years ago. Both Jempsons and the Co-op would be very difficult to develop, given the restrictions of their sites, so a single new unit is needed. The overflow section of Mount Street car park would be a good place to put a new supermarket, and the sloping site would make it easy to provide car parking beneath the store itself.