Local MP Amber Rudd was in Rye Town Hall on Saturday morning for her annual meeting with Rye residents. In addition to her regular surgeries in Hastings and Rye, Ms. Rudd has held these open meetings since becoming MP in May 2010. While commenting on the “thin numbers” of those attending she took comfort from it being the best turnout yet.
Flanked by representatives from East Sussex County Council (ESCC) and Rother District Council Keith Glazier, David Ampthill and Genette Stevens, she took questions on matters largely to do with roads and potholes, fielding them where appropriate to the relevant member. She undertook as constituency member to investigate a report of fish dying in polluted waters in Winchelsea Beach and Councillor Glazier defended the record of ESCC in relation to the complications arising from the complexities of pot-holes.
The Highways Steward regularly patrols the county and the East Sussex Highways website now sports a map which allows a comprehensive list of problems to be recorded online. Progress can subsequently be tracked and planned highway works predicted.
Satisfaction was expressed by a resident on the now smooth and problem free Rope Walk surface, but the perennial problem of the hazardous instability of Deadmans Lane was again raised.
Rye resident, Simon Bowler expressed satisfaction at Amber Rudd’s juggling of duties as a constituency MP and her role as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change which he described as “finely balanced, a difficult trick”.
Photo: Gerard Reilly
Interesting to see that Genette Stevens, our representative on Rother attended the meeting, but was excluded from the photo shoot, so some of us who were unable to attend, and who have never heard her utter a word in support of the town, or actually knows what she looks like
[Editor’s Note: Genette Stevens was not ‘excluded’ from the photo, our reporter advises that she left immediately after the meeting and before the group photo could be taken. Had she remained, as the others did, she would have been included ]