Home - East Dean and Friston Parish Council

Next Parish Council Meetings

Full Council 5th December
Planning 17th December

Recreation Ground

We are no longer taking bookings for hire of the Pavilion until spring 2020. This is to allow refurbishment work to take place over the winter months.

Community Services within the Village

Charity of the year 2019/20

Churches
Cuckmere Community Bus route 41
Community Watch / Neighbourhood Watch
East Dean Responders
Emergency Plan
Residents' Association
Royal British Legion

Tree Warden

Village Diary (Sep-Nov 2019)
Village Directory (at Nov 2019)
Village Hall

Village website

Who Looks after What?

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Finance Meetings

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Welcome

Welcome to the East Dean and Friston Parish Council website. We hope that you enjoy browsing it and finding out more about our village and its council. We always welcome feedback from our site visitors, so if you have any comments or suggestions for improvements then please let us know via the "Contact Us" link.

What's new?

An Extraordinary Council Meeting took place on 19th November following on from the Planning Committee meeting on the same date. To view the minutes of this meeting click here.

The Parish Council has appointed Debbie Picknell to the post of Admin. Assistant. Debbie started on the 11th November and she will be working with our Parish Clerk, Katrina Larkin, mostly dealing with the work of the Planning Committee and the Neighbourhood Plan Steering Group. You can find aout more about Debbie here.

The agenda for the Planning Committee meeting held in the Village small hall on Tuesday 19th November can be viewed here.

Save the date now! - On Sunday 1st December the Parish Council will be lighting a festive tree in front of the Village Hall to mark the countdown to Christmas. There will be mulled wine and carol singing outside the Village Hall before the party moves on, first to serenade the residents at The Grange, and then to join up with regulars and staff at The Tiger for the lighting of a tree on the village green, with more refreshments and carols. An event for all the family - Further details to follow.

The minutes for the Parish Council meeting, held on 7th November, can be viewed by clicking here. If you're in a hurry then you can view a summary of the minutes from the last three months by clicking here.

Cuckmere Valley Floods; Latest Update - The Parish Council have been informed that dredging work was carried out at the mouth of the River Cuckmere over the weekend of 9/10 November and that, as a result, flood water levels are now starting to subside.

Good News! - Following representations by the Parish Council and the South Downs National Park, BT have confirmed that the phone box at the junction of Gilberts Drive and the A259, that was under threat of decommisioning, has been removed from their "rationalisation programme" and will remain in place. For more on this story see here.

The schedule of meetings for the Parish Council and Planning Committee for next year has now been published and can be viewed here.

Thanks to volunteer work by Parish Councillors Paul Seeley and Phill Hill, the East Dean south side bus shelter now has a new floor, replacing the old one that was rotting.

The Parish Council have received information from the Forestry Commission regarding this season's tree felling in Friston Forest. To find out what's happening, click here.

Flower displays - Hopefully many of our residents are enjoying the flower displays that now grace the Downlands Way shopping area. These will shortly be refreshed with winter blooms. To read more about this project please click here.

The Parish and its Council

The Parish of East Dean and Friston is located between the south coast towns of Seaford and Eastbourne, situated on the southern edge of Wealden District in the County of East Sussex and within the South Downs National Park. It is a relatively large rural area, comprising the village of East Dean and Friston, together with the smaller hamlets of Birling Gap and Crowlink. The A259 main coast road passes through the Parish with the old village to the south and the newer parts of the village (known as the "Downlands Estate") to the north. The Parish is primarily residential, covers an area of 3.3sq miles and consists of some 760 households with a population of around 2,200.

East Dean Village is centred around the Village Green with its war memorial, medieval church and long-established inn, “The Tiger”. To the North-West of the village, as the A259 ascends Friston Hill, is the area known as Friston, which was originally a separate village with its own church at the top of the hill.

Birling Gap is a coastal hamlet with a long shingle beach, backed by the famous Seven Sisters cliffs and not far from Beachy Head. The Birling Gap visitor centre and cafe, and some of the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.

Crowlink is a small hamlet grouped around a manor house; in the 18th century it was a haven for smugglers of Gin that became known as "Genuine Crowlink". It was also once the home of the Edwardian author, Edith Nesbit, whose best-known work is “The Railway Children”.

Parish Councils were formed in England under the Local Government Act 1894 to take over local oversight of civic duties in rural towns and villages. Before this date a variety of groups based around ecclesiastical (church) parishes had responsibility for these matters, in a system of local government that originated in the feudal system of the 8th century. The establishment of Parish Councils effectively separated church from state and today's councils are totally secular in nature and independent from the Parochial Church Councils that deal with the administration of the local Church of England places of worship.

Following the 1894 Act, both East Dean and Friston began Parish Meetings (not council meetings) and East Dean then formed a Parish Council in 1924. The Friston Parish Meeting merged with East Dean to form the East Dean and Friston Parish Council in 1948.

Parish Councils are the first tier of local government and have limited variable tax raising powers. The component part of the Council Tax, which comes to the Parish Council, is known as the Precept.
Parish Councils are responsible for areas known as civil parishes, and there are approximately 9,000 Parish Councils in England. East Dean and Friston is one of those civil Parishes. Although there is nothing to prevent Parish Councils being political in nature, the current East Dean and Friston PC members are all independent of any party political sponsorship. The current Parish Council was elected in 2019 and is due for re-election in May 2023.