Caroline Ansell has met with the Chancellor to discuss the town’s priorities ahead of the Spring Budget.
Caroline went to No11 Downing Street to speak to Jeremy Hunt and his Treasury team.
The MP has already successfully asked the Chancellor to improve funding for both East Sussex and Eastbourne councils to help fund social care and homelessness respectively.
The county council has received £5.3 million extra and the district council £140,000 as one-off payments.
In addition, she has also been successful in extra funding to fix potholes. Over £20 million of extra council and government funding is now being used to repair the holes and ESCC is fixing 30,000 a year across the county.
Other items she discussed included Sea Defences. The treasury reiterated the commitment to spend £100m to protect Eastbourne from flooding for the next century.
She also talked about Brownfield first development. Caroline has long campaigned for tax reforms to better incentivise brownfield development, such as the old Debenhams or BT buildings in Eastbourne.
The MP is looking for these projects to be put into the government’s £1bn brownfield development fund which has already unlocked 65,000 homes on brownfield sites alongside new powers in the levelling up act to empower councils to develop these sites more easily.
“I had a positive meeting with the Chancellor and his team where I could explain that innovative ways to build houses in a town constrained by the sea and downland need to come online and that flood defences are hugely important,” said Caroline.
“I also thanked the Chancellor for the extra money he has found for our councils to deal with specific pressures. Myself and my colleagues asked for his assistance and it came. This is good news and shows the government is prepared to listen and act even when there is a huge need to limit government borrowing post-pandemic.”
