Eastbourne Carpet Gardens: 69.56% back the new planting

Eastbourne Live is written for the town people live in: Old Town and Meads, Seaside and Roselands, Hampden Park, Langney and Shinewater, Ratton and Willingdon Village, Sovereign Harbour and the centre. The town is boxed in by the sea, the Downs and Eastbourne Park’s floodplain, which is why almost every argument here, about housing, traffic or the seafront, comes back to the same small amount of land.

Two councils matter. Eastbourne Borough Council handles planning, bins, licensing and housing inside the borough, and East Sussex County Council runs the roads and the schools. The western edge of the town sits inside the South Downs National Park, which is its own planning authority. All three publish a great deal and almost none of it is read. We read it, we write down what it says in plain English, and we link to the document every time so you can check us rather than trust us.

Start with these

• Eastbourne house prices: the average home sold for £250,523 in May 2026, down 3.8% over the year while the South East rose 1.2%. Why flats are dragging the borough average below the price of a terrace.
• Eastbourne to London trains: 1h33 at best to Victoria but 1h38 in the peak, £7,372 a year on a season, and the cheaper ticket that costs you the Underground.
• Roadworks and travel: Kings Drive shut overnight from 17 August with hospital access kept open, Willingdon Drove in September, and the A22 speed limit that lasts until January 2027.
• Things to do in Eastbourne: Airbourne is free from 13 to 16 August, Towner’s main show is £11, and both Beachy Head’s visitor centre and the Redoubt Fortress are shut. Checked prices, not guesses.
• Eastbourne planning: a draft Local Plan that allocates 301 homes a year against a government need of 714, the 25 strategic sites, and the autumn consultation that is your real chance to object.

Every fact carries a link to the source it came from.