Campaign Breakthrough News for South Broadwater

We have pleasure in announcing that we are holding our first Annual General Meeting in public since lockdown� It will be at the Parish Rooms, thanks to Broadwater Community Association, on 19th May at 7:30pm� Sarah Palmer from Turning Tides is coming to give us a talk on their work towards ending local homelessness� There will be refreshments and a raffle with the proceeds going to Turning Tides�

We are happy to report that, thanks to our local and county councillors, what might be described as an historic meeting took place at Ivy Arch Tunnel recently� Present were ourselves, Local and County Councillors, WSCC Local Highways Manager, representatives from Worthing Borough Council (WBC) and two representatives from Morrisons Estates Department� Unfortunately Network Rail did not turn up�

After decades of campaigning about improving the tunnel, and the buck being passed from one body to another, this is the first time a Councillor has knocked heads together to make something happen�

The drainage gullies are going to be cleaned and Morrisons are going to clean the decking beneath the car park where a lot of the mould is�

Councillors called for an action plan to be drawn up and gave everyone until the end of May to finalise it� Graffiti remains a stumbling block� WBC said they have one cleaner left for the whole of Adur and Worthing�

Then it happened! One Wednesday morning we discovered that somebody unknown had painted the entire tunnel pale grey� We can only assume that Network Rail bowed to the pressure and took action� Sadly Skeleton Crew’s mural had to be painted over because the taggers had ruined it� Sadly too, inevitably it didn’t last long, as the taggers are back� However, a resident gave us some intel as to who could be responsible which has been passed on�

This is a major step forward� Yes the ‘drainage’, which wasn’t even classed as such by Morrisons, desperately needs improving� We suspect that it is extremely old as well as crude and may date back to the B&SC Railway days� Anyway we’ll have more on that later�

We do look forward to seeing you on May 19th, although unfortunately there will be no Councillors present as the WBC AGM is on that day�