Agenda Item 13 Correspondence

STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No1. Rectory Field Response from SIPC to arrange meeting. Page !1 of !13 STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No1. Rectory Field(cont) Original note from Pauline Matthews re Rectory Field Page !2 of !13 STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No2. Sussex Widlife Trust 2.1 Emails relating to fire on Iping Common 28th February 2018 STEDHAM WITH IPING TROTTON WITH CHITHURST PARISH COUNCIL PARISH COUNCIL Clerk: Jane Crawford Clerk: Neil Ryder Mount Cross Minsted Midhurst West Sussex GU29 0JH Steps Trotton West Sussex, GU31 5EP email: [email protected] email: [email protected] Email to Tony Whitbread Chief Executive Sussex Wildlife Trust 22 June 2018 Dear Mr Whitbread Fire on Iping Common 28th February 2018 Thank you for your letter of 18th May and for the “hand of friendship” offer. Our two parishes would obviously prefer to maintain friendly working relationships with SWT, and very much hope to restore these after our recent disagreements. However, our rôle in any such relationship is to represent our communities, and we cannot ignore the continuing outrage over SWT’s initial reaction and subsequent handling of the recent fire – particularly the refusal to arrange an independent enquiry into it (we did not ask for a “public” enquiry). Unfortunately, your letter does not provide us with the information we would need to reverse the surge of local resentment – in fact, it seems to raise more questions than it answers, such as: - You say that you instigated a “full enquiry” but we are not aware of any local parish councils, neighbouring landowners or local witnesses to the fire that have been involved in any such enquiry. - You have not sent us any report of that enquiry, or that of the fire service or any copy of the SDNPA verification of the enquiry (which you had promised). - You claim that there has been “no negligent damage”. We can accept that the fire may well be beneficial to wildlife in the long term but your view that the current state of the common does not represent damage is a very clear point of difference with the view of local residents and users of the common. There has certainly been extensive damage, which is there for all to see. - Whether this damage was negligent is not addressed in your letter and we would need to see the report on your enquiry before we could judge whether it adequately covers such issues as: how your team had assessed fire risks in the light of weather forecasts that day; whether poor maintenance of the fire breaks was a factor in the very wide spread of the fire; whether eye witness reports of the fire jumping the bridle path onto private land at the NE corner of the common due to flying embers from the top of piles of high and burning piles of rubbish from your fencing operations. - Why are some of these piles of burnable material still in place adjacent to so-called fire breaks Given these last two points, we feel it is premature for you to call for an apology over our “assertion of negligent damage”, let alone a public one. We would be very interested to see copies of the enquiry report, together with the views of the SDNPA on it and the reports of the “independent organisations and fire experts” that have apparently looked at your “systems and safety procedures”. I hope you can understand that local people, hearing that you had lit bonfires in an area surrounded by dry, dead bracken, on a common littered with high piles of dried cuttings from your own fencing operations (some of them right on the edge of firebreaks), on a very blustery day - which just happened to be the last day you were allowed to have a bonfire due to the nesting season – are bound to feel this amounted to negligence until you release reports countering those views. The fact that your initial response carefully skated over the fact that the bonfire was lit by your own team, that you refused to arrange an independent enquiry and a public meeting to report on it and that it took two months for us to receive any response to our letter of 27th March (other than via the press) is not yet a basis on which we could “draw a line under the past”. If you are prepared to send us all the reports mentioned above, we will do our utmost to respond fairly. Yours sincerely Morag Birch Neil Ryder Clerk Clerk / member Stedham with Iping Parish Council Trotton with Chithurst Parish Council Page !3 of !13 STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No2. Sussex Widlife Trust(cont) Page !4 of !13 STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No2. Sussex Widlife Trust(cont) STEDHAM WITH IPING TROTTON WITH CHITHURST PARISH COUNCIL PARISH COUNCIL Email to Tony Whitbread Chief Executive Sussex Wildlife Trust 27 March 2018 Dear Mr Whitbread Fire on Iping Common 28th February 2018 In the Minutes of the LNR meeting on 8th March 2018 great emphasis is placed on how the fire started, thus conveniently sidestepping the issue of why fires were still being lit on such a day in such weather conditions. Our interest is in why the fire started and on how it spread so far and so fast despite the firebreaks on the Common. 1. Risk Assessment ñ Did SWT rely on a generic Risk Assessment for the clearing and burning exercise? ñ What does that Risk Assessment conclude about bonfires on heathland and the piling up of combustible materials? ñ How did the risk assessment compare with that done by the National Trust for their nearby burnings on Woolbeding Common on the same day? ñ Was a Risk Assessment specifically repeated and was it in any way different on 28th February in order to take account of the well-publicised and forecasted weather conditions? ñ What does the Risk Assessment say about the risk of fire spreading to neighbouring houses, woods and businesses and to traffic using the busy A272, given the proximity of the bonfire sites to all of these on 28 February? ñ How significant was the date of the fire, given that the official bird nesting season commenced on 1 March? ñ What procedures were in place for the control and management of bonfires by volunteers? ñ Were the volunteers briefed before the fire was lit? We would like to see the detailed briefing that they were given, in particular the training to prevent the spread of the fires as well as details of the use of the fire brooms which locals have observed remained in situ around the Common and were consequently burned rather than being available for use. ñ If so, why did both the briefings and procedures prove inadequate? ñ Who was supervising the volunteers? ñ Why did so many of the firebreaks put in by SWT fail to work? ñ To what extent was the fire’s spread aided by the lack of controlled burning in recent years and the consequent volume of dry bracken, and by the piles of cuttings from SWT’s own fence preparations? 2. Enquiry We have already called for an independent enquiry to take place into the fire and its causes at which independent witnesses of the fire and the activities leading up to it can be heard. You have offered an investigation run by your own staff, which will be scrutinised by the South Downs National Park Authority (“SDNPA”). Page !5 of !13 STEDHAM WITH IPING PARISH COUNCIL SIPC Meeting 18th July 2018 - Agenda Item 13 Correspondence No2. Sussex Widlife Trust(cont) 2.1 Emails relating to Stedham Common Gates On 15 Jul 2018, at 18:36, Lucy Petrie> wrote: This meeting is now rearranged for 20 July at 10.30am to discuss gates on both commons Lucy From: Lucy Petrie < Sent: 04 July 2018 08:43 To: Ryder> Subject: FW: Stedham Common Gates URGENT please! BHS are meeting with Jane W and me on 17 July at 2.30pm at Iping car park. If you want to come, please do. We are going to discuss gates, closing times and stiffness. But also possible new gates on Stedham (their design etc). It turns out the slow closing gate by Iping carpark is not the design the BHS thought they had agreed because it does not stop for 2 seconds before closing, which is a problem for horse riders, if you are opening the gate towards you. So I will be asking that the time can be extended to 12 seconds overall closing time, up from 8s. Also can we ask for at least two gates like this on Stedham – do we think that is a good idea? The disadvantage of these gates is that they cannot be locked open. Lucy On 27 June 2018 at 11:19, Lucy Petrie wrote: Dear Sarah Thanks for your long e-mail, which I really appreciate. Certainly it would be good to meet up and walk around when it suits everyone. The issue of one-way gates and stock control is a contentious one, because the Natural England/ BHS gate trials didn’t seem to bear this out. I can see a farmer might prefer this, because instinctively he feel the cattle are less likely to escape but the evidence does not support this and SWT should respect this.

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