Businesses and residents across Hastings have lost millions  of pounds of income, numerous jobs, and millions of hours of time due to the negligent mismanagement of roadworks on the A21 that were due to be completed in December 2024 but still remain ongoing in September 2025.

A failure to learn from this project will allow East Sussex County Council to continue to provide unchallenged poor services to local communities. 

And a failure to compensate businesses and individuals directly affected will mean there is no incentive for ESCC or any other council to provide better project oversight in the future.

Our MP is calling for action in parliament. A time is approaching when local government reorganisation could give current ESCC officers even more responsibility.

Unless we act now to get proper answers on what went wrong on this scheme nobody will be called to account and mistakes will happen again.

2,500 signatures here should trigger an independent review by ESCC's Scrutiny Committee that will allow key questions to be answered without the need for a full, expensive, and time-consuming public inquiry.

This project goes back many years, to when promises were made by Sea Scape (now Sea Change) about the huge benefits in terms of new jobs and homes that would come from a range of projects, including this one, if a series of schemes were funded with public money via SELEP (South East Locsl Enterprise Partnership).

The key questions we want answers to are:

1. What were all of the outputs promised to be delivered via SELEP funding in Hastings?
2. What evidence is there that these targets have been achieved?
3. With regards the A21 junction project what was the original grant money spent on.
4. How much has the scheme now cost the council to deliver?
5. Why was it decided not to continue negotiations to secure the land for the roundabout scheme but instead go for a signal controlled junction?
6. How many significant changes were made to the construction plans during the period from September 2024 to project completion?
7. Who had  project management control over the scheme, who were they reporting to, and what records exist documenting design changes and budget increases?
8. Why was there no communication with local businesses regarding the plans for the area or ongoing progress reports?
9. Why was a neighbouring property owner not consulted about works on their land?
10. Can it be clearly demonstrated that negligence led to financial losses of third parties?