Council tax bills will soon be coming through letterboxes and, as you are aware, the overall bill is made up of several component parts: some goes towards the provision of District & County Council Services, some towards Police and Fire services and some, more locally, towards the services that the Parish Council provides.

This year, the Parish Council has taken the decision to increase the Parish element, both to help cover rising costs and, predominantly, to give a budget for us to continue to employ planning consultants to help fight the large-scale speculative developments that Wivelsfield is being beset by.

We have not taken this decision lightly but, having seen the strength of feeling against the recent 150 homes application (as evidenced by a strong turnout at a public meeting last November, plus the sheer number of local objections on the Lewes District Planning portal), the Parish Council believes that employing specialist planning consultants to put together detailed and robust representations, highlighting the ways in which such developments would be contrary to planning policy and would damage and place greater strain on the community, is necessary, to seek to protect the identity of  Wivelsfield Green as a village.

The monetary increase for the Parish element will be equal to just over 50p per week, for a Band D property.