Archive for category: News

April and May are always busy months for us at the Repair Café, as you bring all the kit you’ve just got out of the shed ready for some sunshine! We’ll gladly take on broken garden furniture including parasols and loungers, as well as sorting out those lawnmowers and strimmers and sharpening your garden tools. We have been inundated with toasters and vacuum cleaners recently – but please give that toaster a good shake before bringing it in to us to dislodge all those crumbs first! And do check the filters on that vacuum – it’s amazing how many folks never clean or change them!! If you’ve lost the instructions, we’ll find a copy online for you.

Our bike repairers will be hard at work sorting out repairs for bikes big and small and all that will be alongside our usual electrical and clothing repairs. There’s a huge demand for our service nowadays, so please get there early and we’ll see you as soon as we can!

Chailey Repair Café is part of a world-wide movement where volunteer experts repair things free of charge – although a donation towards running costs is invited. Anyone can bring along broken items or clothing needing repair from home, and have a cuppa and a cake and then watch while your repairs is done in front of you..

You’ll find us at St Peter’s Church, Chailey on the A275 at Chailey Green on the second Saturday of each month (12 April, 10 May, 14 June and so on) between 1000hrs and 1300hrs where we have a full Café service including our legendary cakes!

Contact us at chaileyrc@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do to help.

See you very soon!!

Bryan McAlley and the Chailey Repair Café team

There’s still time to have your say on a draft plan that outlines council proposals to improve air quality across Lewes district over the next four years. Actions in the draft Air Quality Action Plan (AQAP) cover measures for the entire district with a specific focus on central Newhaven and Lewes town centres, which are designated Air Quality Management Areas due to traffic pollution.

Why we need to tackle air pollution

Air pollution is associated with a number of adverse health impacts and is recognised as a contributing factor in the onset of heart disease and cancer. Additionally, air pollution particularly affects the most vulnerable in society: children and older people, and those with heart and lung conditions.

Lewes District Council is committed to reducing the exposure of people in Lewes to poor air quality in order to improve health.

Objectives of the Air Quality Action Plan

We have developed actions that can be considered under five broad themes:

1. Alternatives to private vehicle use
2. Promoting travel alternatives
3. Public information
4. Transport planning and infrastructure
5. Traffic management

You can read the full draft action plan here.

Have your say

We are inviting feedback on the draft action plan. We have provided an online survey to help structure your feedback. This asks about each of the overarching objectives of the plan, listed above.

The consultation will stay open until 5pm on Friday 16 May 2025.

Following a review of feedback given during the consultation, the AQAP is expected to be adopted from summer 2025.

East Sussex County Council are  currently running the ‘Be Safe, Buy Safe’ project to raise awareness of the dangers associated with e-bikes, e-scooters, their batteries & chargers and home conversion kits. There have been some tragic stories recently where possessions, homes and lives have been sadly lost to fires attributed to these items.

As part of this project they are looking to try and reach as many residents as possible to provide a link to advice regarding the safe purchase and use of these items.

Attached is an advice leaflet. Please also go to their website which contains much more detailed information on this subject, should you wish to view it. The link website is www.eastsussex.gov.uk/BeSafeBuySafe

The public are being asked to share how they use the county’s 2,000 miles of rights of ways and help shape a 10-year access plan.

East Sussex County Council has launched a public survey as part of its review of the county’s Rights of Way Access Plan and is encouraging people to share how people use rights of way, how they plan to use them in the future and what barriers they face.  The new plan will replace the previous Rights of Way Improvement Plan.

The survey is the first step in an extensive process which will see the council working with a wide range of groups and organisations across the county and the public to identify what needs to be done to ensure the countryside is as accessible as possible, encourage people to use rights of way and protect the county’s landscape. The plan that will be developed with feedback will identify areas where action can be taken to improve public rights of ways.

Members of the public can complete the survey here. The survey will remain open until Friday, March 14.

More information can be found here.

The Parish Council will be meeting online with Highways on March 19th .  Such meetings happen twice a year and are an opportunity to be informed of and to discuss Highways’ planned interventions, but also to discuss with Highways problems on the lanes and roads of Chailey.  Residents will find the record of our previous meeting on our website,  https://chaileyparishcouncil.gov.uk/parish-council/council-meetings  and are invited to tell the Clerk, before the end of February, by emailing to clerk@chaileyparishcouncil.gov.uk of any particular problem in their neighbourhood so that we can raise it with Highways and report back.