FROM  
 Cllr Geoffrey Bowden
Green Party Councillor Queen's Park Ward
Chair Economic Development and Culture Committee
Mobile: 07557 197601

Dear Roy

Here's the background which is driving this.

The waiting list for beach chalets had to be closed in 2006. There are 122 on that list who have been waiting for a beach chalet to come available for as long as ten years. In 2011 the council consulted widely about how to unblock this log jam and it was agreed that any new tenancies would be for 5 years only and only let to local residents in the future. This has created some very limited 'churn' but not enough to open up the waiting list again (and there are huge numbers asking about beach chalets and how they can get their hands on them). Sadly, we also know that there are a number of chalet leaseholders, who simply do not use them or only very rarely.

Against all this we have conducted a benchmarking exercise and the proposed new pricing levels compare favourably with Worthing and in the context of the council being forced into a corner by the coalition cuts to look at all areas of revenue generation, chalets has had to be included in the mix.

I appreciate that you will not welcome any increase, but I believe that if we are to open up the list to the many hundreds who would like the opportunity to occupy one of the limited number of chalets we have, then a pricing lever has to be part of the formula to create opportunities for them to do so.

Incidentally, you may be interested to know that in 2013 the council spent £52,000 on repairing and redecorating the Rottingdean (east) chalet block. This work alone exceeded the total income from all the chalets across B&H for that year. There are other blocks in need of similar work but we have to prioritise where we target the money and there are many other worthy causes along the seafront.