At last! Two moves in the right direction

In the week that Rother council announces that it is starting legal action to ensure removal at long last of the eyesore Grand Hotel ruin it also reveals that it is planning to invest 2.1m in creating an industrial park on the old Sidley goods yard site.

Jobs in the Sidley area, the town centre rid of the hideous mess that has blighted it since February 2003 '“ the prospects for progress and encouraging and give hope for the future.

Practical difficulties are, as always, legion. It remains to be seen how engineers will overcome the problems of access to the goods yard development and the Link Road which will pass through the site.

No matter, the principle of making productive use of all of the valuable area of land is sound, particularly the idea of creating start units for entrepreneurs with good business ideas and needing a swift and easy means of getting going.

For the good of the town economy and of its job-seekers, we wish the scheme well.

Rother has not endeared itself to the public over its handling of the Grand Hotel site saga.

The public, in turn, does not appreciate the constraints under which the authority has worked or the behind-the-scenes effort which has been made secure redevelopment of the site.

But, having run the full gamut of the legal process, the authority has now announced that it will take action.

This is not some obscure building tucked away out of sight. It is in the town centre and '“ worse '“ on a major route into the town. The hotel's burned-out shell has stood for four and a half years as a sad symbol of what Bexhill used to be and what it has largely lost.

Much hope has been pinned on this site over the years.

The proposed new health centre with flats above would have been a significant new asset. Alas, the funding was not forthcoming. Some folk dreamed of the much-needed new library being created there.

Alas, a dream without substance.

New stores with flats above would have been welcome. But if the market had existed then developers would have been queuing round the block.

More flats are the best for which we can hope.

The sooner they come the sooner a sorry episode in town history can be set aside.