The Roads Company needs more voluntary support. Can you help? Take a look at the box on The Players page for the roles needed. If you'd like to help in one of these, or any other area, please email us or use the Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you.

To help with information flow to the Roads Company we are seeking some resident volunteers to become ‘Road Wardens’. It’s a grand title, but it is not a formal position in our organisation – we are simply looking for residents volunteering to help in the community. We're looking for one or more 'Wardens' per Downlands Estate road; support from those who are often 'out and about' eg dog walkers, regular walkers to shops, etc. Nothing too onerous. On, say, a monthly basis, we would ask them to let us know of items to help us help the residents.

Things like:-

i) potholes or damaged roads,

ii) overgrown hedges which may cause an issue with the roadway,

iii) houses with 'for sale' or 'sale agreed' boards so we can make contact with the outgoing and incoming residents. (We can sometimes pick this up from Rightmove, but not always) 

iv) empty houses (which may become available for sale)

v) anything else which the 'Wardens' may think we'd be interested in for the maintenance of the Estate roads.

If you are interested and would like to help, please get in touch by email or via the Contact Us page. Thank you

The current phase of the road maintenance programme is virtually complete. Just a few tidying-up and reinstatement activities remain. Our thanks to everyone for your understanding and patience while work was ongoing.

The Downlands Estate road maintenance programme for 2025 consists of a large number of relatively small repairs including kerb maintenance, gulley repairs and patching. These maintenance activities are a fundamental part of our Preventive, Corrective, and Replacement measures and are based on advice received from Hailsham Roadways, our appointed contractors, who are experts in the field.  

Why is kerb maintenance so important? The kerbs form an integral part of the combined drainage systems, seamlessly incorporating gutters and drainage outlets, which together form a channel for surface water drainage. This is crucial as it helps prevent water ingress under the tarmac and subsequent frost damage; water ingress along the edges of the road is a major cause of tarmac disintegration. Maintenance of the kerbing is therefore a positive investment in the road network as it helps avoid otherwise earlier costly repairs and patching of the road surfaces.

During the current exercise, some kerbstones which were originally identified as requiring realignment rather than replacement, have proved to be in too poor a condition and have crumbled whilst attempting to realign. These have required replacement. 

Where necessary, the reinstatement gangs will attend to disturbed verges etc after the current phase of works is completed (end May/early June).