Words: Merlin Betts Artwork: Chris Sav @disappointman
Well, it was a little more than a month to decide, and they’re backdating it so it’s more like the next 18 years, but you get the idea. The Local Plan is out for consultation, and our Hastings future is being decided. The decision-makers are a government in Westminster that most of the country didn’t vote for (that’s struggling to last five years, nevermind 20); and a borough council that just tried to cancel our elections and is, theoretically, about to be dissolved. Ain’t democracy a fine thing?
It certainly would be if we had it, but that’s neither here nor there. You’re probably (hopefully) a cynical crazy like me and can barely understand why you have to care about the Local Plan at all. And that’s alright, that’s good, you clearly have a refined appreciation of our political situation – it is unpleasant. It stretches your eyelids open and straps a screen to your face, abandoning your mind to an endless stream of vomit-inducing, tentacle-slithering nightmares while Taylor Swift (or possibly the old Ludwig Van) plays out in the background. Not easy.
“But fear not”, the clarion calls, “for there is the consultation!”
Yeah. Great.
Comments from businesses, charities, landlords and their support groups will be taken seriously. The activist campaign groups will be loudly ignored. Then the bureaucrats will rubber stamp it and call it ‘democratically approved’. There’s no place for you in this well-oiled machine. And the council thinks that is entirely appropriate, because organisations know a heck of a lot more than you do.
I mean, by that logic, why even ask people to vote?
“Of course”, they say, “if you put the effort in – you lazy, malingering scoundrel – then you too could understand the plan and contribute your views, and you too could be ignored alongside anyone else that objects to what the pointless pratts in Westminster have deemed necessary for the good of the empire…uh I mean sovereign…uh no, wait, I mean City of London, don’t I? No, nation! Yes, nation! Good of the nation!”
If you do read the Local Plan, it’s full of what I’d call empty promises, often put in grand and very paternalistic terms. Paragraphs that sound like they’re part of some great socialist scheme, but they’re really just saying “no change”.We will protect green spaces (by doing what we’re doing already, which is building on them). We will protect local history (by continuing to neglect it). We will add more housing (by demolishing it).
There is something here to fight for though, something to be gained by your involvement. Not so much in this consultation as in the coming years, while projects in the Local Plan (and projects not in the Local Plan) start to unfold, crushing whatever happens to be nearby. It really is the next 20 years that we’re deciding on, together, as a community. But we’re not just deciding this month, we’re deciding every month, every week, every day of that time. It’s a continual process, it’s us living our lives.
Communities fighting for the soul of their town
Despite appearances we are not a one-topic publication here at Hex. We do not only talk about housing. However, housing is the big topic right now. We are in a housing crisis, we do have dozens or even hundreds of rough-sleeping homeless, many more in unstable accommodation, and many more people not homeless but struggling to pay rent. You’ve probably heard this all before. Maybe you’re one of these people struggling, or worse, you’re renting to one of them at extortionate rates.
The housing issue is apparently why Starmer’s government has set some difficult housebuilding targets that our local council is keen to meet. Of course, the real reason for the targets is to privatise more homes and create ‘economic growth’ (profits for those who are already rich). It’s not about getting people housed. If everyone had a stable home, you wouldn’t be able to grow the housing market, and a large sector of ‘economic activity’ (profit-making for the rich) would stagnate.
Starmer’s a neoliberal, whether he knows it or not. He believes in the economy like it’s the Good Lord. If the economy doesn’t expand, the Good Lord’s Angels stop paying for Labour Party leaders to get cushy jobs in the afterlife (after politics that is). This is why he’s happy to build on greenbelt, and why he’s happy to tell a densely populated area surrounded by seas, flood plains and legally-protected nature reserves (it’s Hastings I’m thinking of here) to keep on expanding. Expanding into what, Kier? The Lost City of Atlantis? The Garden of Eden? The Sudetenland? What are we talking about here, what have you been smoking – or eating, for that matter? And where can I get some?
The only question for Hastings is: how do we meet housing needwithout building more houses?
And this is easier to answer than it sounds. I’m going to quote from (or at least talk about) activist group Communities Vs Developers here. I say activist group, they’re more of an umbrella for lots of different people who care about how our town actually works. You can find them at communitiesvdevelopers.netlify.app. It is a real (and safe) web address. No I don’t know why it looks like that. Probably something to do with free anarchist software development.
First, for all you build-hungry Starmerites out there who start seeing red whenever you can’t hear a construction site nearby, the activists have plotted out 266 homes we can get by using the space above car parks (so the car parks keep working) and expanding existing buildings. They also mention three sites of existing social rents that are slated for demolition, but should not be.
These three sites total about 500 homes, a chunk of which have already been emptied, and the rest are waiting to be rehoused. They do not need to be demolished, they are functional properties that need to be retrofitted, mostly just to meet energy efficiency standards, and which could be expanded to fit more homes (and not tiny ones either) if they weren’t going to be knocked down. So, in total, you build-head crazies, that’s already 750 or so homes you can get to work on without touching a blade of greenbelt grass.
Apart from these specific sites, we need policies that support more flexible building options – for real people, not for money-hungry hedge fund golems and rogue AI investment bots. There is always a risk that attempts to help real people will play into the hands of vicious freaks in positions of power. The Renters Rights Act for example does many useful things, but also seems to be compromising temporary accommodation and encouraging landlords to use license agreements to house people without giving them any rights (because under those agreements, they’re technically not ‘renters’).
Retrofit needs to be prioritised over demolition. Old and non-residential buildings should be converted and adapted, and we should drop ineffective conservation rules that lead to buildings being left to disuse and ruin. We should also be thinking about mixed use developments – over and within commercial and industrial spaces (where that won’t make residents’ lives hellish). Big empty warehouse in the middle of town? Maybe that should be ‘regenerated’, and not the 400 existing homes at Four Courts?
Next, since it’s a Green council (so we’re told), I need to talk to you flower-loving hippies out there.
Put down your bag of wild seeds for a minute, stop foraging for the big pesto harvest and pay attention. You there, tweed man from the Burton St Leonard’s Society, you can pay attention too. Despite claiming “Hastings will protect and enhance its natural and historic environment,” the Local Plan wants to build on (or in effectively close proximity to) nine green and nature spaces: Tilekiln Farm; Sandrock Bends; Graystone Lane; Rock Lane; Breadsell; Winchelsea Lane; Beaneys Lane; Seaside Road; and the former playing fields at the decaying convent on Magdalene Road.
There’s a black hole in the town’s green infrastructure – what about cycling, renewable power, a water system that doesn’t endlessly pollute the environment and us – some of which will be covered overleaf. We got a lot of money to roll out decent cycle networks, and it’s all sitting unspent, ready to disappear. The main thing I’m annoyed about though, is that we basically have no jobs and no decent industry here – and that could be solved in one fell swoop with a green industrial revolution, except no-one seems to want to front the money for it (that’s not just a local problem, obviously).
Why does no-one want to spend the money? Because if you create a long-lasting technology that makes people self-sufficient, requires relatively minor maintenance and doesn’t need frequent updating, it doesn’t make much profit. That’s hugely beneficial for you and me, but it’s a bit of a nightmare for an investor looking for a quick turnaround.
I mention the Burton St Leonards Society as a catch-all for anyone interested in historic buildings because I have noticed some major historic buildings whose owners are just waiting for them to fall down. The Magdalene Convent for one – I keep thinking we have to refer to it as the “former” convent because it’s been condemned and might as well have been destroyed already, but it’s not gone! It’s still there! However, between the weed farm, the scrap merchants, the weird car collection, the fire and the roofs falling in, there’s a lot that’s been lost. There’s rich history there that was absolutely fine a decade or two ago, but has just been left to rot by neglectful owners.
I don’t know the full story about the hospital on West Hill Road, St Leonards – there are probably stability issues with the cliff, but what about all those buttress-looking things underneath? Do the security guards still live on site? Are they safe from total collapse? Regardless, that’s another big old set of buildings being left to fall down. And then of course, St Leonards Church and the land surrounding – last I checked it was lost in a process of endless but almost entirely passive discussion about its future, while the threat of it being crushed in a landslide increases daily. Big, unused and historically significant buildings. Are they in the Local Plan? No. “protect and enhance [Hastings’] natural and historic environment” my arse.
And now, I must address the socialists, the impoverished, the jobless, the seething masses.
You need to tell the council that any new homes their housing association buddies build must be genuinely affordable. That means social rents at LHA rates. This is the phrase you need. Do not accept the words “affordable housing” or “shared ownership”. Social rent at LHA rates. And while you’re at it, tell them that private developers have to put up their new homes at affordable rates too. Why not? If they can’t handle a 20% drop to their rent revenues, then why did they get into the housing market? Ban the use of residential housing as Airbnbs (but renting out a room is obviously fine – that’s how a BnB is supposed to work, rather than being a night-by-night property rental service).
Make sure that proper amenities are provided to support new housing, and make sure developers pay for it. The council waived the section 106 it could’ve used to force the developer at Archery Gardens to pay towards amenities – and that deal was done on the basis they’d have 56% affordable rents on the completed site. Guess what? The number dropped to 26% affordable housing, with even less for rent. Council had left itself with no options. The developers didn’t hold up their end of the deal, and what happened? Well, they made profit out of it. Actually one developer went bust, but that wasn’t because of Hastings. The remaining developer got their money, and the council, or, I should say, the taxpayer, didn’t get theirs.
And on this exact point, you might want to remind the council (I should perhaps say councils – East Sussex figure in here somewhere) about their various other gifts to the private sector. £14 million to resurrect Hastings pier, only to sell it to Gulzar for £50,000? Millions went to Brighton, via Seachange, for the whole Priory Square deal that cost a fair chunk of £12 million. Seachange, by the way, are a private arm of government that was set up to waste public money. Anything gold that Seachange touches will instantly turn to dust, and anything it owns that’s crumbling will somehow absorb infinite wealth in order to keep it crumbling, although it never quite falls down.
You know that tiny stretch of bypass up on the Ridge that was going on for centuries? I saw you all talking about it on Nextdoor. Yeah, well, Seachange wasted big public money on that. The (Azur) pavilion in St Leonards – dead? That was Seachange too. No wonder there’s no money around! No wonder there’s a shortage of property, a lack of amenities! Government has been feeding delicious cash directly to this wild beast for years, and its bloated carcass still won’t burp anything back up.
Finalmente, a message for everyone – because it benefits you no matter what political opinion you hold (except maybe if you’re a filthy thieving capitalist who owns half the town and makes a whole lot of money for nothing, well, from evicting people, abusing them, not paying taxes) – tell the council to support community-led developments. Housing co-operatives, community land trusts, community self-builds, co-housing projects. You might not have heard of these, reader, but they’re ways of building and owning property that put residents first, that create genuinely affordable, wholesome, comfortable homes, insulated from the madness of private finance and government chaos. In fact, if you turn this piece of paper over, you will find an article from one such housing co-op on the other side.
Comment on the Local Plan (only if you’re bored or need a good rant) at hastings.oc2.uk. (I do know why that web address looks like that, it’s because Hastings is paying maybe £7,000 a year to JDI Solutions for their Opus Consult thingy. You tell me if that’s a good use of public money.)