BID TO HALT RAIL LAND SELL OFF

It says selling off any part of the station would impose a serious risk to the reopening of the Wealden Line.

At a town council meeting last week Cllr Duncan Bennett said: 'This is probably one, if not the most vital project for the future infrastructural benefit of our town at the moment, and our council should be seen as keen to promote it as much as possible.'

He recommended the town council agree in principal to joining with other interested town and parish councils in assisting with financial support for the next stage of investigations for the reinstatement of the line.

He said: 'It could be the most tremendous mistake that is ever made because once it's lost, it's lost.

'We will never have the opportunity to put all these wrongs right. God willing, the railway will be reopened and we need the land with it. Until we are categorically told that it won't go ahead, we should be doing everything to protect it.'

Gregory Beecroft, the director of property and sales management for the British Rail Residuary Board, said in a letter to Lewes MP Norman Baker that it planned to sell the station site following consultations with the county council and Strategic Rail Authority.

Mr Beecroft wrote: 'The SRA decided that the land could be sold subject to safeguards to ensure that the reopening of the railway is not prevented.

'Special provisions will be made to prevent building on a strip of land 11 metres wide where the tracks used to be.

'I expect that we shall be disposing of this area by means of a long lease, which can be terminated if the land is needed for operational railway purposes.

'In the interim, the land might be used for parking, landscaping or similar uses.

'Development of the site is going to require planning permission so Wealden District Council also has considerable ability to safeguard rail interests.'

East Sussex County Council said it was briefly consulted in 2003 and its condition to the sale was that the land be retained so the line could be reopened.

A spokesman said: 'The county council has campaigned hard for the reopening of the Lewes to Uckfield line and opposes any possible sale of land at Uckfield station that might undermine that aspiration.'