For several years now we have been trying to make sure that Whitehawk Hill and Sheepcote Valley are included in the proposed South Downs National Park. National Parks are the most protected landscapes in Britain, though they are not actually nationally owned, like Yellowstone National Park in the United States. The National Park will bring in new money and expertise to the area, as well as giving our Downland a higher political status.

We have had a very difficult fight. Elsewhere, whole towns, like Lewes and Petersfield have been included in the proposed National Park boundary. Locally, all the Downs around better-off places, like East Brighton and Newhaven, have been excluded from the proposed Park. There is almost a rule that says: if you mostly get fish and chips in a place won’t be in the Park but if you can get a cream tea, then they will be in.

They cannot be trying to exclude Whitehawk Hill and Sheepcote Valley because they are not as good as the Downs elsewhere, for that is plainly not true. If anything the opposite is the truth. Whitehawk’s Stone Age camp, its views to the Isle of Wight, its wildlife (including our own beetle - the Whitehawk Soldier Beetle - found nowhere else in Britain) are superb! Better than loads of the more distant Downs, ruined by agri-business and turned into boring giant crop fields.

It must be because we are a relatively poor community whose environmental needs the National Park makers think they can ignore. Better-off communities like Rottingdean and Ditchling submitted around 30 times more demands for the inclusion of their Downland in the Park than did East Brighton and Newhaven. Their people turned up in droves to the National Park Public Inquiry to back their concerns. In East Brighton we have had a hard fight already to defeat the sewage proposals and it’s not as easy for people to turn out for things like Public Inquiries, like they do in more privileged areas.

It will be a great unfairness if Lewes (industrial estates, their Tesco, bypass and County Hall’s tower blocks) get included in the National Park, whilst ancient Race Hill and its drifts of wildflowers and dancing butterflies get excluded. We managed to persuade the City Council to recommend the inclusion of the Hill and the Valley in the National Park but they then did hardly anything to reinforce their recommendations. They even came begging us for basic information, after having fought our proposals for years and they did not even bother to speak for Sheepcote Valley at the Inquiry.

We made a good fight at the Public Inquiry. Michelle, whose son plays football for Whitehawk, spoke passionately. Fred Netley spoke for us, so did Jane Hawkins, Anne Barke and Harry Pugh, a keen Sheepcote bird watcher. All in all, we had eight excellent local witnesses. We will not know for another 18 months or more whether our Downland is to be in the new Park. All we know for now is that we have done our best. If the government wish to ignore our "fish & chip" Downland and only include "cream tea" Downland in the National Park, it will not be because we have not tried.

Written by Dave Bangs.