Footpath budget spent

And parish councils are being warned that there will be no money towards footpath maintenance for the rest of this financial year and there will be a knock on effect in 2003-04.

Framfield parish councillors were warned of the situation at a meeting at Blackboys School Hall on Tuesday.

Clerk Mrs Ann Newton said that she had put in a bill to the county council for 110 to be reimbursed but was told there was no money available to cover the cost.

She said the county would provide materials towards maintenance work while they were in stock but once they had gone they would not be able to order more.

Parish council chairman Cllr Eryl Thomas said they would like people to carry on reporting footpath problems throughout the parish even though they could not expect financial help from the county.

The bill for costs followed a court battle which ended with a countryside campaigner winning a fight to make the county council unblock a footpath running across the estate of disgraced property tycoon Nicholas Van Hoogstraten.

Kate Ashbrook, former chair of the Ramblers Association, took her case to the Court of Appeal over the path, known as Framfield 9, which runs across the High Cross Park Estate near Uckfield, where Hoogstraten was building a vast luxury mansion.