Merlin Betts
Hey reader. I’ve gone a bit rogue here and written you a 4,000 word article. I realise in this day and age that makes it less appealing to read. I’ll probably break down parts of it into other shorter articles, but in the meantime this is my best attempt at a proper overview of what’s been happening at Clifton Court – an effectively abandoned social housing block over in Castle Ward. The last residents vacated the property in July 2023, but the exodus began in late 2021, meaning that flats there have been empty for almost three and a half years, and the whole property for almost two. This while Hastings Borough Council can’t afford the bill for temporary accommodation.
I call back to the Housing Rebellion occupation of Clifton Court last year, and wonder why Orbit and Hastings Borough Council are so set on the demolition of this misused property. As people increasingly face homelessness because they can’t afford a place to live – not because there are no available homes – I’m wondering: would we need to build more homes if our most affordable housing wasn’t continually being destroyed?
I arrived at Clifton Court car park on Sunday 23 June 2024, the evening, plenty of light and heat still beaming down from the sky, carrying a huge pot of steaming stew, ready to relax into whatever the occupation might hold. The atmosphere was more like a barbecue, no security or police (or maintenance personnel…) to contend with, no jostling or shouting. Despite the concrete of the car park, it had that garden feel, people sat on folding chairs, food and refreshments, arts and crafts. It felt nice, a weekend day out, but with a deeper underlying purpose.
This wasn’t the first time Housing Rebellion had protested at the property. In November 2023 they camped outside to draw attention to the 3,800 empty homes in Hastings, with the 53 boarded-up flats at Clifton Court as a clear example of abuse and misuse – not just empty homes, but social homes, owned by a (supposedly) not-for-profit landlord, supported by government grants. Homes desperately needed by the local population being effectively abandoned – without adequate explanation.
I’d arrived for Housing Rebellion’s second protest as an on-site journo, alongside a range of other more useful people: architects, a building contractor, local councillors, and Energise Sussex Coast’s experts on energy efficient buildings. The plan was to get inside, assess what’s actually happening there, and stay overnight. To prove, from as many angles as possible, that this is a habitable building going to waste. We didn’t know at that point how many flats would actually be habitable, but it seemed obvious that emptying it and demolishing was not going to help the town’s iceberg of social problems, with the ongoing housing crisis at its tip.
It’s hard in these strange times to find words to talk about benefiting people or looking after their living space, unless you talk in terms of money. Sure, Clifton Court and other social homes like it don’t turn over a profit – with effective management they can break even, and save up enough to deal with major works, but that’s it. So they’re not ‘economical’ to run by the modern definition. Orbit’s colleagues in the field, Southern Housing, have been selling off social housing at auction, claiming that they can’t afford to keep building new homes if they’re having to pay to keep these old ones running, especially at social rents. Orbit likely apply the same thinking to the demolition. And I’m sure the logic is accurate, as far as it goes. Outside of government investment, they wouldn’t raise the money to grow. But that’s kind of the point. Housing associations are there to maintain housing for the residents. They’re not supposed to be developers, unless someone (probably Westminster…) gives them the extra resources to build.
If you want to keep it in financial terms, we have to ask: how much is being lost by leaving Clifton Court effectively abandoned? How much more expensive does life become for people who already can’t afford it, when you replace social rents with affordable rents (30% more expensive) and shared ownership properties (effectively properties sold off into private hands, where the private buyer also pays rent and service charge). How much more money does the council have to spend when more people are made homeless because they can’t afford market rents, or because they can’t find a landlord that’ll take a tenant on housing benefits? How many people in temporary housing or homeless, stayed that way for years longer than they should have, because people leaving Clifton Court suddenly had priority over them in moving to a new home? In other words, how many lives are being made worse by these homes not being used in a housing crisis. And how much of a cost is that incurring? No-one seems to be asking that.
Orbit, the housing association which owns Clifton Court, thinks the flats are unusable and need to be demolished. They cite the high cost of refurbishment and potential danger to any existing residents, but won’t provide details of what this danger is or could be. As it turns out, it’s very unlikely that the residents were in any danger (from the structure, anyway – I can’t speak for how they dealt with each other). The problem was money, and how Orbit either wanted to spend less of it, or make more of it. Or both. Even now, neither they, nor the Green-led Hastings Borough Council (HBC) seem particularly concerned by the environmental or social cost of demolition and rebuild.
Back at the occupation, I saw the door to one of the two blocks of flats that form the property had been carefully removed. I set down our dinner and wandered in. Instinctively I went floor to floor, checking every room I could get access to – but at least a third of them were locked. Some had been squatted (long before we arrived), some were pristine, and one had even been done up as a showflat – mint condition. At the top, the highest two landings had turned into a pigeon nest. Despite the Orbit van parked downstairs (and the employee who later arrived to drive it away), clearly no maintenance personnel or security staff had been visiting. A mixed bag, but overall it seemed to be in very good shape for a block that’s supposedly condemned.
Please vacate the premises while we increase their market value
In 2021, an Orbit newsletter to residents stated, “Over the last 18 months we’ve looked at the issues at Clifton Court and what we could do make [sic] it a better place to live. We’ve found out that the way it’s built lets heat out and damp in. There are also limits on how much we can alter the building layout because of the way it’s built.”
Not to cut them off here, but they should know the flaws in the way it’s built – they built it, back in 1973. If they only just “found out” how it was constructed, how it hasn’t been adequately improved (or you could just say “maintained”, since keeping residents safe should be a basic condition, not an improvement) that’s more than a bit concerning. I guess I’m being rather harsh on them here though, I mean, they’ve only had the last 50 years or so to familiarise themselves with their own construction, a building which they have exclusively been responsible for. With all the new properties they were acquiring in that time, how could they be expected to fulfill their legal and social obligations by paying any attention to the residents they already had?
The newsletter continued: “We know that just updating the heating or changing windows or doors won’t be enough. The building could be updated to meet modern standards, but it would cost at least £5 million. We therefore have to consider if it would be a better option to redevelop with new homes. We haven’t made a final decision as to which option we will choose. Whichever we choose, residents would have to move out during the building works.”
The newsletter goes on to suggest that everyone should be moved out within a year. Ignoring the fact that no resident knows how expensive £5 million is in this context (from the sound of how things work at another local housing association, spending tens, hundreds of thousands, even a million, is fairly normal), there are already a few things wrong with their case.
Damp
As we walked around the flats at Clifton Court, going floor to floor, we didn’t find any damp. Some rooms had been recently refurbished, others were showing some wear, but the worst smell we came across was pigeon shit on the upper floors. There was no moisture seeping in, no black mould, no damp problems that would endanger people or cause them to move. According to a later FAQ document from Orbit, “the remaining residents at Clifton Court were relocated to new homes in July 2023”. We occupied the building in June 2024, long after it had been emptied and basically condemned, so it’s not like they’d recently done any damp work that might be concealing the problem, rather – there seemed to be no damp problem.
Modern standards
It’s hard to know what Orbit means by “modern standards”. Are they talking about the new regulations for tower blocks set after the Grenfell fire? Regulations that only apply from 2023 onward? Are they talking about heat-saving cladding, solar panels on the roof, have they spoken to local experts like Energise Sussex Coast to consult on what they could install and how much it would cost? Are they talking about a champagne fountain, a new floor for saunas and hot tubs, replacing the garages with gyms, building a new community hall in the car park? Hiring a full-time staff of yoga teachers? What are they actually talking about?
And given that Hastings is full of Victorian and pre-Victorian properties in long-term occupation, we have to see their sense of “modern standards” in context. Residents might be moved to other old properties, and meanwhile many people in temporary housing (many local examples of which – in my experience – suffer from substantial repair and maintenance issues) need housing association properties to get out of homelessness. Could it be the lesser of two evils to endure slightly less than modern standards, to keep tenants and potential tenants out of worse homes?
Costing and transparency
There was nothing in the newsletter about what work actually needed to be done and why, and there’s been perilous little information on it since. They’ve claimed that the £5 million estimate comes from an independent survey. We’ve asked to see this survey, and asked to see the costs of different redevelopment plans, but Orbit has so far declined to offer this information. As we understand it, they’ve also failed – perhaps even refused – to share this information with the council. Despite requests for further information, Hastings Borough Council (HBC) got a press release that’s very similar to the FAQ filed out to the rest of us.
The final part of the newsletter explains what benefits residents who agree to move out can receive, setting the tone for the whole piece as an attempt to convince residents to voluntarily exit as many of the flats as possible.
I probably shouldn’t speculate here, but I’ve been to a number of the big housing association blocks around town, and the residents all talk about similar problems. Long wait times before essential works (eg. damp, bedbugs, broken security doors) are resolved, if they’re resolved at all. Dangerous or difficult residents being moved in with vulnerable residents in supposedly sheltered accommodation. A lack of housing association staff on site for maintenance or security issues, and staff that are present having short hours or being told not to engage with residents. I don’t know if any of this was happening at Clifton Court back in 2021, but these are often the conditions in a block – like Bevin Court – that residents have to endure for a number of years before being told their home will be demolished, and they can volunteer to leave early for something that sounds better, but in reality is completely uncertain.
I’ll come back to this, but you have to ask, reader: what’s the real reason for wanting everyone out of there?
Do you like your experts personal or fictional?
We took some activism-friendly professionals around the available flats. While our information about the structure of the property was limited to what we, our architects, building contractor, and a local councillor can see – i.e. we don’t have a detailed survey – we know that it doesn’t need to be empty.
Our experts estimated that the EPC rating would be low, and that heating the flats might be expensive, but didn’t think that works to improve this would be particularly costly (contrary to Orbit’s predictions). Refurbishment, they thought, would certainly be less environmentally damaging than a rebuild.
A full retrofit could also include a redesign to extend the building and increase the number of flats in the property from the current 53. Orbit, on the other hand, claims that the number would need to be reduced as part of any refurbishment. Another local architect, who wasn’t at the site with us, drew up tentative designs for extending the blocks and retrofitting them, but Orbit has refused all invitations to discuss alternative plans to demolition.
An Orbit spokesperson told Housing Rebellion, “The decision to decommission Clifton Court was taken with the safety of customers uppermost in our minds. The building was issued with an Improvement Notice by the local authority on safety grounds […]”
We asked HBC about this, and they confirmed that they had issued no notice. In a separate FAQ document, Orbit use different wording, mentioning a different kind of notice as more of an afterthought, “As we emptied the building, Clifton Court was also issued with a prohibition notice by the fire service on safety grounds.”
East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service keep a public list of the notices they’ve issued. Those that remain in force can stay on the register for more than three years, but those that are resolved or withdrawn are removed. Entries on the register go back to 2006, and none of them mention Clifton Court. If a notice was issued, it was resolved before 2022, before the last residents were removed from the building.
In other words, no improvement notice or prohibition notice affected Orbit’s plan to demolish Clifton Court.
We noticed a building that looked a lot like an electrical substation in between the two residential blocks. Legal documents show that underground cables are present and UK Power Networks has access to a section of the land within the overall property to repair, maintain or replace them. Nothing has been said in any of Orbit’s proposals about how they’re dealing with this, and whether their proposed demolition will impact the surrounding area’s energy supply. If it is a substation, and they plan to demolish it – that’s a very complicated and expensive process. If they don’t plan to demolish it, it’ll certainly limit the land they have available to rebuild on.
It’s also interesting that the neighbouring care home, the Hermitage, was built around the same time as Clifton Court, but isn’t up for demolition. It presumably has a number of structural similarities, and hosts vulnerable tenants with health concerns, yet for some reason it seems to be at least adequate residential accommodation. What’s the difference?
Taxpayer-funded, seemingly neglected and still making ‘surplus’
The Orbit statement to Housing Rebellion continued, “an independent report commissioned by us found that the building requires extensive, long-term remedial works to meet new building regulations. The site is therefore not suitable for permanent or temporary housing.” Of course, no-one’s been allowed access to this report. Not the council, not the local papers, not Housing Rebellion. It could say anything – we don’t know. We have experts who would happily look over it, offer advice, potentially offer costed alternatives. Orbit aren’t interested. Now, let’s talk about “extensive, long-term remedial works”.
A quick bit of history. Orbit Holmesdale Housing Society bought the land in 1973 and built Clifton Court. Like all housing associations Orbit don’t pay any tax on their operating surplus, and receive generous subsidies and support from government funding because of their apparent charitable purpose. Basically, we taxpayers fund a lot of their work, so in modern capitalistic terms, we deserve to see a return on our investment. Their other source of funding is the tenants, the people who live in their properties, who Orbit are (in various ways) obliged to house in good, affordable homes.
It appears that Orbit Holmesdale became or were absorbed into the modern Orbit Group, and that they’ve therefore owned and been responsible for Clifton Court since it was built – in which case it appears to be their fault, be it in lack of works, lack of funding, lack of knowledge or presence, that the building hasn’t been maintained to appropriate standards. I mean, there’s no-one else to blame. They’ve been the landlord that whole time. Taxpayers and tenants have been paying them for that entire time… and yet the property seemingly hasn’t been maintained or upgraded.
These extensive and long-term remedial works cannot be a surprise launched upon tenants. Orbit should be apologising for failing to do its job, explaining why it failed. But instead, mysterious yet critical works have to be undertaken, and tenants have to be shifted out to other properties, meanwhile many other residents of Hastings have to exist in temporary accommodation, or make their beds on the streets.
And about these building regulations. Orbit didn’t need to meet new building regulations to maintain the property, to have kept it temporarily open for these last few years. They only have to deal with regulations for more extensive refurbishment or other substantial changes, or when new regulations come in that render their building unsafe.
Like the Building Safety Act 2022, which came in as a response to Grenfell. Since then, buildings like Clifton Court have come under the remit of various new regulations focussed around historic design flaws that make buildings unsafe. Most of the Act came into force in 2023, the year that Clifton Court was finally emptied.
This is probably what they mean by meeting building regulations – that they didn’t want to be responsible for Clifton Court when the terms of the new Act came into force, and they didn’t want to tell people they were avoiding another Grenfell (and therefore had built or maintained Clifton Court so poorly it could become another Grenfell).
Housing Rebellion and the Hastings Independent asked if Orbit would be willing to share the details of their report with local architects – an independent face we can actually talk to and get information from – or if they would be willing to meet with activists. They declined to respond, instead restating their purpose as a housing association and explaining:
“Orbit is developing two new 100% affordable housing schemes on Harrow Lane and Fredericks Road, which will comprise 80 affordable rent and 116 shared ownership properties, including 31 flats and 165 family homes. The 80 affordable rent properties will be allocated via the Council’s Housing Register.”
While it’s good to know they can state what their broad purpose is supposed to be as a housing association, they clearly don’t understand what those words mean. They’re demolishing homes during a housing crisis, in order to build new homes that are mostly for private sale rather than sheltered or affordable social accommodation.
Demolishing homes during a housing crisis
At the start of 2024 there were 1,547 Hastings households that had been waiting for a home for up to eight years. The total number of properties let in 2023 was just 189… so it’s hard to see why these 53 flats at Clifton Court were left languishing, slowly seeping into disrepair, for multiple years when they could’ve been lived in.
Accurate figures on homelessness and the demand for temporary accommodation are hard to obtain, but temporary accommodation is desperately needed as well, ideally not priced at the private rate which is equivalent to night-by-night hotels, or multiple times the normal cost of renting, all of which HBC – or the local taxpayer – has to cover. Then again, if Orbit’s complaining of finances, temporary accommodation brings in substantially more revenue than social housing, although it would seem rather unethical for a social housing provider to start raking it in by giving pricier accommodation to those on waiting lists for their own social housing.
I can’t help but wonder, if Orbit are struggling with finances so much, how can they afford to empty paying properties and give compensation to so many residents, pay increased council tax for years (because the property is empty), and then ultimately pay the demolition costs, and pay for the rebuild of a more advanced and apparently larger property? I also wonder about the height. Could it perhaps be short enough to avoid the terms of the Building Safety Act?
As far as we could establish in Summer last year, the property is currently habitable – I and Housing Rebellion activists stayed overnight in it with no issues – but it would be wise (but not strictly necessary) to improve its EPC rating, particularly to reduce heat loss in winter. And their absentee maintenance officer will finally have to get rid of the pigeons.
Orbit might cite ongoing negotiations as the reason why the property was emptied and not immediately demolished. They say, “We have been in discussions with local and national authorities regarding options for redevelopment with the aim to provide as many affordable homes on the site as planning and environmental decisions allow. Once options have been agreed, we will of course consult with stakeholders to ensure the site meets the needs of the local community.”
There is no discernable reason why these flats should have been left empty while Orbit’s planning and negotiation remains ongoing. But there’s also this question of stakeholders. They barely talked to HBC, and they haven’t talked to any other community stakeholders. Hastings Housing Alliance, for example, had an event in Cornwallis Gardens right next to Clifton Court, talking about housing issues and these related matters. All the local stakeholders were there, including council leaders. Orbit was absent.
HBC left us at the end of last year with the information that they’re waiting to hear Orbit’s proposals for the site, but they say, “Given the pressures on housing and on the council’s finances, we need to work with our housing association partners to develop affordable rented housing and whilst we will always push for the maximum number of affordable homes we can, we want to hear Orbit’s plans before we comment further.”
The Greens’ Deputy Leader and Housing & Community Wellbeing Portfolio Holder, Glenn Haffenden, wrote on Nextdoor, “They are demolishing to build more homes, more sustainable homes, cheaper to run homes, more environmentally friendly homes and also homes that meet the current housing requirements.”
Another Nextdoor user replied, “It is always more environmentally damaging to demolish an existing building, with all the landfill, air pollution, and waste of embodied carbon that entails as well as all the carbon emissions and natural resources in building the replacement. This is why the Architects Journal and many others including the current London plan insist on a ‘retrofit first’ approach to meeting housing demand. It is very concerning that as the new cabinet member for housing you are going along with the developer ‘greenwashing’ of new builds as more sustainable than refurbishing.”
It is perhaps concerning that Cllr Haffenden didn’t seem to understand that the demolition is not a done deal – at the time of this exchange, the council hadn’t seen any of Orbit’s plans or proposals. He said, “I have no idea about the structure of the building as this was all done/decided before it was my portfolio.” But before his portfolio, Orbit were still in discussions with various mysterious partners, and didn’t seem to have a plan yet. Certainly nothing had been decided. Unless Glenn is privy to some secret developer communication channels the rest of us can’t see? Green voters should also be seriously concerned that a leading member of their council doesn’t care about the environmental implications of demolishing housing that could be retrofitted.
Hastings Independent Councillor John Cannan, who also works with homeless charity the Seaview Project, offered a different view: “I see examples everyday of the devastating impact lack of housing has on people in terms of both physical and mental health. I have raised the issue at Council to no avail.
“That is why I am wholeheartedly supporting this protest. It is a disgrace that Orbit are not progressing the refurbishment of Clifton Court as a matter of urgency. Providing affordable rents and secure tenancies should be at the very core of what they do. Instead, they sit back and prevaricate, make all the right noises whilst doing nothing at all to provide a roof over the head of the homeless in Hastings.”