Policy BEX 9 should be removed from the DaSA. It's inclusion in the Submission version of DaSA has been undertaken without the necessary and legally required investigations required under the Habitats Regulations and reinforced in unequivocal terms by the April 2018 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Court in the matter of People Over Wind and Sweetman v Collite Teoranta (hereinafter referred to as People Over
Wind) (C-323/17). Rother District Council has failed to:

- prepare in advance of any decision to include BEX 9 in the DaSA, an Appropriate Assessment that demonstrates beyond reasonable scientific doubt that development of the BEX 9 site (land off Spindlewood Drive) will have no harmful impacts on the nearby UK, European and internationally protected Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation and Ramsar (collectively here termed "the Levels") which are just 60m from the BEX 9 boundary.
- has included BEX 9 in the Submission version of DaSA when it knows full well that both Natural England and the Environment Agency, along with many others within the approx. 1,500 formal objections to planning Application RR/2017/1705/P (the BEX 9 site) have expressed major environmental and ecological concerns about the inherent risks that development would introduce to the Levels in direct contradiction of extant and DaSA, Local Plan and National Planning Policy Framework (para 118) policies intended to enhance protection of such areas.
- The Spindlewood site in BEX 9 is probably the most ecologically and environmentally sensitive area in the entire Bexhill area of Rother District Council in terms:
- geographically, of its location adjacent to the protected Levels,
- its topography, comprising part of a funnel valley for the Cole Brook which accumulates surface water exits directly into the Levels, and,
- its surface water catchment which follows the topographical features from high ground to the north and is accumulated as it drains towards and into the Cole Brook and thence via very low tying and frequently flooded or waterlogged meadows into the watercourses of the protected Levels. It has been submitted that mitigation measures could remove contamination and pollution risks if development of BEX 9 took place.
However such mitigation measures must be shown to be effective, reliable, timely, guaranteed to be delivered and preserved as effective over the long term lifetime of a development. Such guarantees have not been produced for BEX 9. It is not appropriate to assume such guarantees will become available, and to do so would be contrary to law as per People over Wind.
- as part of planning application RR/2017/1705/P (the BEX 9 site) the applicants have failed through three attempts to date to offer satisfactory guarantees that the Levels will be unharmed by a development on the Spindlewood site. Indeed, each such attempt by the applicants has resulted in greater risks. Their efforts to mitigate have, in fact, resulted in magnified and multiplied risk consequences - all as set out cogently in the document published on the Rother District Council planning website on 13th November 2018 as a Neighbour letter with the legend "Response and Critique of applicants report to inform and Appropriate Assessment". What was originally indicated by the applicants to be a simple field pond form of Sustainable Drainage System (SUDS) could not be built, would fail to function effectively and would result in pollution of the Levels. Later ideas from the
applicant have been equally inappropriate to the site and its topography. Further, the applicants now say the Swales they would wish to construct to carry the surface water to the SUDS filtration system would be 3m at the narrowest and 9 meters at the widest. Not only does this indicate an expectation of huge water volumes but it aIso creates dangers for families and residents of any approved scheme.
BEX 9 MUST BE REMOVED FROM THE DASA.