Hastings 'is the coolest town on the South Coast' and future tourism is looking good says Labour council eader

Earlier this month, the Local Government Association published a long-awaited report on the financial stability of Hastings Borough Council.

The report paints a difficult picture of the council’s finances, warning that depleted reserves and spiralling homelessness costs could see the authority forced to issue a section 114 notice (a process often compared to bankruptcy) unless urgent action is taken.

To find out more about what comes next, Labour council leader Paul Barnett sat down for a wide-ranging discussion covering housing, budget cuts and the future of a controversial hotel-building project.

Cllr Barnett said: “The housing market exists outside of the council’s control. So, we can try every single aspect of intervention — which we are doing and we’ve more ideas to come — but we will have to see what impact they have and whether we are able to move fast enough.

“A wave of housing crisis has come our way. If that wave increases because of what is happening nationally — interest rates, mortgage costs, employment issues — it will be really difficult for us to make our interventions fast enough to reduce the costs to the town.

“At the moment, we are confident that what we are doing is the right thing and will reduce our costs to a level where it is eventually falling.”

These interventions, Cllr Barnett said, include the purchasing of properties to use as temporary accommodation and taking steps to support new affordable house building in the town.

The council has also hired new housing officers, who Cllr Barnett said will be taking the steps needed both to help those in temporary accommodation move on and to prevent more people falling into homelessness in the first place.

Through these measures and others, the council hopes to reduce its homelessness spending by £1m per year over the next few years.

On top of that, the council says it also plans to find £1m of other budget savings over the next three years and Cllr Barnett was asked where the cuts are likely to fall.

He said every area is being looked at but this year they’re starting the process earlier and hope to consult on budget proposals before Christmas.

Another way the council is trying to bring in money is through the sale of its assets.

To this end, the council has brought in the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) to carry out a review of its property portfolio.

While this review is still ongoing, the council has already agreed to sell four of its properties in hopes of an early win.

Two of the properties set to be sold — land at Bexhill Road and Mayfield E — have outline planning permission for housing, as they were sites the council had initially intended to develop itself.

The council says it hopes to — but can’t guarantee it will — sell these sites to social housing developers, meaning the final schemes will be made up of affordable housing.

One area of special focus in the LGA report was the council’s arrangement to build and then lease a new hotel. While not specifically named in the report, it is understood this refers to the Premier Inn set to be built at the former Cornwallis Street car park site.

The LGA report raised several concerns about this arrangement, including the the level of scrutiny the project received before moving ahead. The LGA ultimately advised the council to “continue to explore the available options in relation to this contract, to minimise costs and maximise benefits in so far as is possible”.

Cllr Barnett said: “The town desperately needs more hotels and better hotels. I struggle to find anywhere suitable for my disabled parents when they want to come here and come see me. We have a lot of traditional seaside hotels that are not accessible to all the public for those reasons and the good hotels we’ve got are full.

“The future, we know, is looking good for Hastings in terms of tourism. Why wouldn’t you want to come to the coolest town on the south coast and we are cool now not only in a trendy way, but we’re cool compared to Athens.

“It’s a serious point isn’t it. This isn’t going to go away. The weather is going to get hotter and hotter [and flights] more and more expensive, people will want to holiday here.”

Over the past few years, the council has been lobbying for government support to tackle its rising housing pressures.

A focus for its lobbying has been a review of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates — the mechanism the government uses to decide how much money housing benefit claimants receive to help pay rent.

Cllr Barnett said: “We’ve been lobbying this government for years to make changes. They haven’t listened. We just get a blunt refusal, even when our MP asks she gets a blunt refusal. It is really frustrating.”

He explained how the LHA rates for Hastings are set below other authorities in East Sussex ‘for some bizarre reason’.

Cllr Barnett said the council also wanted to see government bring in rent controls, take steps to progress its promised ban on ‘no fault’ evictions and beef up the council’s compulsory purchase powers in a way that could force developers to build out housing sites more quickly.

But can the council survive without those changes?

“Time will tell”, Cllr Barnett said.

“I think if we all pull together — private landlords, the voluntary sector, our housing associations — we can solve this.

“Hastings is a real can-do town; it is proud of the fact it finds a way out of the biggest challenges it has. So of course, I am confident that we will do that.”