Two separate consultations on local government reorganisation were launched recently by Brighton & Hove City Council and by Lewes District Council with a deadline of 25 August 2025. Piddinghoe parish councillors have agreed to submit the following response to both consultations, to be formally endorsed at the next full meeting of the parish council.
Piddinghoe Parish Council strongly opposes the proposal to incorporate the current Kingston ward of Lewes District Council comprising the parishes of the Lower Ouse Valley into the Brighton & Hove unitary authority.
The Lower Ouse Valley is a dramatic and characteristic feature of the Sussex landscape, a tidal flood plain framed by downland ridges to the west and east, which has for centuries defined human activity, land use and settlement patterns between the port of Newhaven and the county town of Lewes. The Lower Ouse Valley parishes share a distinct character that is entirely different from the fringe neighbourhoods of Brighton and Hove. We are a world apart. Our parishes remain principally rural rather than suburban, small communities with low densities: villages, smaller settlements and farmsteads each with their own identity and a strong community fabric. Set within the National Park, oriented to the river and its tidal flows, our residents value tranquility, nature, landscape and dark night skies over urban convenience. None of the villages have shops, there are just two pubs, two schools and minimal street lighting. Common priorities are flood risk from the Ouse, speeds on the C7 and the ever-increasing volume of traffic arising from developments in Newhaven and beyond.
The South Downs provides a distinct, and nationally protected, topographical barrier separating the communities of the Lower Ouse Valley from the urban coastal strip. Our parishes have no direct transport connections with the Brighton and Hove conurbation, all road and rail throughways being via the A27 corridor or the A259 coast road. As a result, the Lower Ouse Valley parishes relate most closely, both geographically and functionally, to Lewes as their principal service centre. Nowadays Lewes is our rail hub, our retail centre, our focus for health, education, sports, leisure and culture. As the southernmost parish, Piddinghoe also relates secondarily to Newhaven and Seaford for some services, and even to Eastbourne for health.
What would the incorporation of the the Ouse Valley villages add to an enlarged Brighton and Hove? Kingston ward would be entirely anomalous within the city’s territory. With fewer than 2,000 residents, it would contribute negligibly to Brighton and Hove Council’s population target and would by virtue of its low density and disconnected geography surely be more costly to service than the urbanised coastal strip. The City Council would not even have planning control; set wholly within the National Park, that will rightly remain with the Park Authority. We consider the proposal to expand the city boundaries to include Kingston ward to be a plainly ill-considered and insincere negotiating gambit in the City Council’s ambitions to consolidate the conurbation eastwards.
