Chairman: Ed Miller, 17 West Drive, Ferring BN12 5QZ. Tel: 01903 502267

Secretary: John Browning, 4 Alderney Road, Ferring BN12 5PJ. Tel: 01903 501311

The object of the Group shall be to secure the conservation and preservation of the beauty and present character of the public open spaces of Ferring, in close co-operation with other organisations involved in the same work and friendly liaison with County, District and Parish Councils.

Object: the preservation of the Character of the OPEN SPACES OF FERRING
Press Release

We would be interested to hear from other groups whose aim is to preserve open spaces.

Invitation to join the Conservation Group - Meetings normally take place in the Village Hall aT 2:30 p.m. on the last Friday in the month.  New members are always welcome and can enrol at the door.

The Conservation Group was formed in 1988 and rapidly attracted a large membership. Its continuing mission is to preserve the beauty and character of Ferring. In practice this means conserving its wild life (including some rather rare wild flowers), conserving the framework of open country and undeveloped foreshore that surrounds it (the Goring Gap, Highdown, the Kingston Gap and Patterson’s Walk) and conserving the open spaces and open layout of the village itself.

We are a campaigning group, in that we seek to draw residents’ attention to threats to the ‘beauty and character’ of Ferring, and to put pressure on the District and County Councils, and other public authorities, to resist developments which threaten to nibble away at the Gaps, spoil the approaches to Highdown Hill, redevelop the land behind the beach or, within the village, cram two (or more) houses into plots designed for one.

In the last 12 months we have seen the ‘framework’ made more secure – the Planning Inspectorate has stressed the importance of the Gaps (and refused to allow more building land to be carved out from them), Highdown Hill has been included in the draft boundaries of the South Down National Park, and a beachside development of 30 flats has been refused. But there is a real threat to the interior of the village in the constant applications for in-filling. These are particularly pernicious when they involve demolishing perfectly good houses in order to build extra properties on the same site.

The Conservation Group has opposed the following planning applications:

The Strand, The Tudor Close, Owl Nest Cottage, ‘Hadley’, Sea Lane Gardens, Langbury Lane, Malcolm Close – and will continue to oppose all such overcrowding of our village.

What goes with more development is more traffic. We are campaigning on this issue too. We have written to our County Council representative about the need for more sensitive advice its officers might give on highways aspects of planning applications, and about the ridiculous ‘No Speed Limit’ on Marine Drive, just before the sharp bend at the beginning of Sea Lane.