At the end of November, the owners of Camber Post Office erected a fence along their boundary with Sea Road, as well as an identical fence around The Old Garage site, with a gate opening on to the Post Office forecourt. Whilst most people agreed that The Old Garage site now looked much neater, initial concerns were that the boundary fence along Sea Road would cause difficulties for residents to access the road and, more importantly, emergency services might not be able to access the road at all.
Someone took the initiative to cut the overgrown foliage back as far as possible on the opposite side of the road, thereby widening the entrance to Sea Road a bit. Dustbin lorries that service the unmade roads in Camber are smaller than the standard lorries that collect from houses on the main roads and they appear to have been able to make the turn into the road and successfully collect the rubbish and recycling from the houses. However, concerns remain as to whether an ambulance or a fire engine would be able to enter the road with such a narrow aperture. This is the only entrance to Sea Road, First Avenue and Second Avenue, with the far end of the road being obstructed with a bollard.
Whilst the majority of Camber residents accept that a landowner is fully entitled to fence in their own boundary, there is a collective eyebrow being raised as to why the current owners have chosen to do this. Since the Post Office was built in the 1930s, the forecourt has remained unobstructed, most likely to allow unencumbered access to Sea Road.
However, someone was not happy about it! Within two weeks of the fence appearing, it was badly damaged. The concrete fence posts were smashed and some were bent over, and some of the gravel boards were broken, too. At first, many residents believed this was the result of a collision by a large vehicle that was struggling to make the turn into the newly restricted entrance to Sea Road. It had widely been expected that something like that might happen! Then, a couple of weeks later, similar damage occurred to the identical fencing and posts around The Old Garage site. It seemed like too much of a coincidence, and also unlikely that it would have been caused by a vehicle trying to make a tight turn as it was along the straight, roadside part of the fence. It is now widely thought that both incidents were acts of vandalism or protest.
Within days of each incident, the owners of the land had made temporary repairs to the fences. It looks like the newly re-sized entrance to Sea Road is here to stay!
