RESIDENTS could face 100 years' worth of maintenance bills if their battle to prove they have the right to their roads succeeds.

People living in the four streets that make up the original Kemp Town estate, one of Sussex's most historic communities, claim the council has no right to make them pay parking charges.

They are angry at the council's plans for a controversial parking voucher scheme that would change the appearance of Lewes Crescent, Sussex Square, Chichester Terrace and Arundel Terrace with "ugly" parking signs.

The residents claim the roads have never been legally transferred to council control since being built by Thomas Kemp in the early 19th Century.

Although the council has assumed responsibility for the maintenance and up-keep of the four roads for many years, Lewes Crescent resident Dorothy Steers-Hellacar said she had been unable to find any evidence the arrangement had ever been made official, which would mean the streets still technically belonged to the leaseholders and freeholders of the estate.

But a council spokeswoman dismissed the idea and questioned the quality of Mrs Steers-Hellacar's research. She said the relevant documentation could easily have been mislaid over the years. She said: "It is just nonsense. Anyway, if they insist the roads are private and belong to them then we could give them a large bill for the cost of the maintenance and upkeep of those roads over the last 100 years or so."

Evidence

Mrs Steers-Hellacar said: "Last September we heard about the council's plans for the parking scheme and as we are aware there is a difference between Kemp Town and the Kemp Town estate, we became concerned and decided to do some research.

"I wrote to the council and they stated the roads had been adopted by them in the period prior to 1835. There is evidence that they were still privately owned in 1828, so that means if they have been adopted it must have been between then and 1835.

"But I have been to the Records Office in Lewes and been through every single minute the Kemp Town estate ever actually wrote from 1828 and there is nothing to indicate they ever handed them over."

Mrs Steers-Hellacar and her husband, Hugh, wrote to every resident in the four roads to gauge their

opinion and received

more than 220 positive responses.

Mrs Steers-Hellacar said: "None of the residents here like what the council is doing. There are a lot of elderly people living here and some of them are being made quite sick by the distress it is causing them."

The residents have labelled the parking scheme "insensitive" and feel, if proved to be right, they will be in a position to negotiate a compromise with the council.

Sensitive

Mrs Steers-Hellacar said: "We don't mind paying an amount for our parking, we just want a more sensitive arrangement that will not spoil the atmosphere of the area by imposing ugly foot-wide parking signs and marked out parking spaces."

Council opposition leader Geoffrey Theobald has taken up the cause and has warned the council it may be acting beyond its powers in imposing parking rules on the roads if it cannot prove it ever adopted them. He said: "I am still waiting for a proper response from the council on this matter.

"It may be the council could adopt the roads just by putting notices in the Argus, but the point is if they have never done that then they cannot simply ignore the issue."

Mrs Steers-Hellacar, who insists she has never intended to be contentious, said: "The council say they have been paying to maintain the roads for all these years, but in fact it is not the council, but the people of Brighton. First we were rate payers, then we were poll tax payers and now we pay council tax."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.