Emergency contact signs

An emergency contact sign has been put up outside the Church. It is intended to ensure that emergency services can contact a keyholder out of normal hours. This is important as the building was designated in the County emergency plan as a reception centre in the event of a major local emergency such as the flooding of Winchelsea Beach. The sign will also help passers-by get hold of a responsible person if they need to report something urgently.
Emergency contact signs have also been provided to the New Hall and Court Hall. The school did not want to be involved. Indeed it did not even bother to reply to the invitation.
The signs were designed and commissioned by the Winchelsea Emergency Group (WEG) and funded by a grant obtained by the local police team at Rye from the Police Property Fund. The PPF was approached after Icklesham Parish Council refused to buy the signs on the grounds that they did not think a parish emergency plan was anything to do with the parish!
Winchelsea was the first ward in the area to produce a local emergency plan and its plan has been used as a template for other villages in the District. WEG also pressed for a local emergency plan to implemented in Rye Harbour when a chemical spillage led to suggestions that appeared likely to reinvent the wheel. However, there is no emergency plan in Winchelsea Beach, the place most at risk from flooding, because of opposition from a ward councillor.